“It is often wonderful how putting down on paper a clear statement of a case helps one to see, not perhaps the way out, but the way in.”

I don’t like authority, at least I don’t like other people’s authority.

A well begun is half ended.

I expect that all of us get pretty much what we deserve of appreciation.

Do you know the times when one seems to stick fast in circumstances like the fly in the jam-pot? It can’t be helped, and I suppose the best thing to do is to lay in a good store of jam!

The joy of all mysteries is the certainty which comes from their contemplation, that there are many doors yet for the soul to open on her upward and inward way.

I am sure it is one’s duty as a teacher to try to show boys that no opinions, no tastes, no emotions are worth much unless they are one’s own. I suffered acutely as a boy from the lack of being shown this.

Readjusting is a painful process, but most of us need it at one time or another.

The worst sorrows in life are not in its losses and misfortunes, but its fears.

It seems sometimes as if one were powerless to do any more from within to overcome troubles, and that help must come from without.

The moment that any life, however good, stifles you, you may be sure it isn’t your real life.

Congenial labor is the secret of happiness.

A diary need not be a dreary chronicle of one’s movements; it should aim rather at giving salient account of some particular episode, a walk, a book, a conversation.

The test of a good letter is a very simple one. If one seems to hear the other person talking as one reads, it is a good letter.

I have known some quite good people who were unhappy, but never an interested person who was unhappy.

I think I feel rather differently about sympathy to what seems the normal view. I like just to feel it is there, but not always expressed.

When you get to my age life seems little more than one long march to and from the lavatory.

Everyone knows almost everything about me. I make it very clear that I’m cool with people knowing all my personal life through my songs.

If you get clear on the what, the how will be taken care of.

Truth is that which makes a people certain, clear, and strong.

Make it so good and so clear that it doesn’t need any further explanation.

The vision is so much clearer when you wipe down the mirror.

White balloons floating away. Expel the energy wasters, they just prey. Move from the clutter, the haze. Clear pearlescent white from the grey.

In the very shadows of doubt a thread of reason (so to speak) begins, by whose guidance we shall escape to the clearest light.

Those things which I am saying now may be obscure, yet they will be made clearer in their proper place.