“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.”

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.

It is a narrow mind which cannot look at a subject from various points of view.

The responsibility of tolerance lies with those who have the wider vision.

It is never too late to become the person you always thought you could be.

Of new acquaintances one can never be sure because one likes them one day that it will be so the next. Of old friends one is sure that it will be the same yesterday, today, and forever.

One can say everything best over a meal.

And, of course men know best about everything, except what women know better.

Character is not cut in marble – it is not something solid and unalterable. It is something living and changing, and may become diseased as our bodies do.

Her little butterfly soul fluttered incessantly between memory and dubious expectation.

Life began with waking up and loving my mother’s face.

No story is the same to us after a lapse of time; or rather we who read it are no longer the same interpreters.

What sunshine is to flowers, smiles are to humanity.

Life seems to go on without effort when I am filled with music.

The final test for a novel will be our affection for it, as it is the test of our friends, and of anything else which we cannot define.

You are always naked when you start writing; you are always as if you had never written anything before; you are always a beginner.

Now it is a funny thing about life. If you refuse to accept anything but the best, you very often get it. If you utterly decline to make do with what you can get, then somehow or other, you are very likely to get what you want.

Love is, after all, a selfish thing; and it throws a black shadow on anything between which and the light it stands.

I don’t want to do anything over again, ever again. I want only to do what I haven’t done. There’s no “again.” There’s only the future. I hate the past – especially my own past.

Is anything sadder than a trainThat leaves when it’s supposed to,That has only one voice,Only one route?There’s nothing sadder.Except perhaps a cart horse,Shut between two shaftsAnd unable even to look sideways.

No one’s promised anything. You could have the biggest record on radio and sell no records.

I never drink anything hot; I don’t like hot drinks, very strange.