One cannot divine nor forecast the conditions that will make happiness; one only stumbles upon them by chance, in a lucky hour, at the world's end somewhere, and hold fast to the days.

Today I stood taller from walking among the trees.

It is easy to pity when once one's vanity has been tickled.

The heart of another is a dark forest, always, no matter how close it has been to one's own.

The prayers of all good people are good.

Old men are like that, you know. It makes them feel important to think they are in love with somebody.

I was thinking, as I watched her, how little it mattered –about her teeth for instance. I know so many women who have kept all the things she had lost, *but whose inner glow has faded*. Whatever else was gone, Antonia had not lost the fire of life.