How happy is the Optimist / To whom life shows its sunny side / His horse may lose, his ship may list, / But he always sees the funny side.

I have read that during the process of canonization the Catholic Church demands proof of joy in the candidate, and although I have not been able to track down chapter and verse I like the suggestion that dourness is not a sacred attribute.

God knows that a mother needs fortitude and courage and tolerance and flexibility and patience and firmness and nearly every other brave aspect of the human soul. But because I happen to be a parent of almost fiercely maternal nature, I praise casualness. It seems to me the rarest of virtues. It is useful enough when children are small. It is useful to the point of necessity when they are adolescents.

Sometimes I have a notion that what might improve the situation is to have women take over the occupations of government and trade and to give men their freedom.

Children from ten to twenty don't want to be understood. Their whole ambition is to feel strange and alien and misinterpreted so that they can live austerely in some stone tower of adolescence, their privacies unviolated.

The knowingness of little girls, is hidden underneath their curls.

The ability to forget a sorrow is childhood's most enchanting feature.