“In bed our yesterdays are too oppressive: if a man can only get up, though it be but to whistle or to smoke, he has a present which offers some resistance to the past-sensations which assert themselves against tyrannous memories.”

There is only one failure in life possible, and that is not to be true to the best one knows.

Our deeds still travel with us from afar, and what we have been makes us what we are.

What a wretched lot of old shrivelled creatures we shall be by-and-by. Never mind – the uglier we get in the eyes of others, the lovelier we shall be to each other; that has always been my firm faith about friendship.

What do we live for, if not to make life less difficult for each other?

I like breakfast-time better than any other moment in the day. No dust has settled on one’s mind then, and it presents a clear mirror to the rays of things.

It is hard to believe long together that anything is “worth while,” unless there is some eye to kindle in common with our own, some brief word uttered now and then to imply that what is infinitely precious to us is precious alike to another mind.

Blessed is the influence of one true, loving human soul on another.

She was no longer wrestling with the grief, but could sit down with it as a lasting companion and make it a sharer in her thoughts.

I like not only to be loved, but to be told that I am loved; the realm of silence is large enough beyond the grave.

What makes life dreary is the want of a motive.

Much of our waking experience is but a dream in the daylight.

Will not a tiny speck very close to our vision blot out the glory of the world, and leave only a margin by which we see the blot? I know no speck so troublesome as self.

I love not to be choked with other men’s thoughts.

What destroys us most effectively is not a malign fate but our own capacity for self-deception and for degrading our own best self.

Our deeds determine us, as much as we determine our deeds.

I like not only to be loved, but also to be told that I am loved. I am not sure that you are of the same mind. But the realm of silence is large enough beyond the grave. This is the world of light and speech, and I shall take leave to tell you that you are very dear.

One doesn’t need a university diploma to realize that the ruler is oppressive and corrupt.

When faced with structural injustice, especially in the form of oppressive military occupations,

There is little that gives children greater pleasure than when a grown-up lets himself down to their level, renounces his oppressive superiority and plays with them as an equal.

Oppressive language does more than represent violence; it is violence; does more than represent the limits of knowledge; it limits knowledge.