The darkest night that ever fell upon the earth never hid the light, never put out the stars. It only made the stars more keenly, kindly glancing, as if in protest against the darkness.
People are so ridiculous with their illusions, carrying their fool’s caps unawares, thinking their own lies opaque while everybody else’s are transparent, making themselves exceptions to everything, as if when all the world looked yellow under a lamp they alone are rosy.
We have had an unspeakably delightful journey, one of those journeys which seem to divide one’s life in two, by the new ideas they suggest and the new views of interest they open.
there are two ways of speaking an audience will always like: one is, to tell them what they don’t understand; and the other is, to tell them what they’re used to.
Life is too precious to be spent in this weaving and unweaving of false impressions, and it is better to live quietly under some degree of misrepresentation than to attempt to remove it by the uncertain process of letter-writing.
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.
