“Beginnings are always messy.”

Religion was nearly dead because there was no longer real belief in future life; but something was struggling to take its place – service – social service – the ants creed, the bees creed.

Love has no age, no limit; and no death.

First one, then the other, getting the upper hand, and too seldom fusing till the result has the mellowness of full achievement.

We have to love because we love loving.

If you do not think about the future, you cannot have one.

Only love makes fruitful the soul.

I think the greatest thing in the world is to believe in people.

The value of a sentiment is the amount of sacrifice you are prepared to make for it.

Life calls the tune, we dance.

The Forsytes were resentful of something, not individually, but as a family; this resentment expressed itself in an added perfection of raiment, an exuberance of family cordiality, an exaggeration of family importance, and the sniff.

Once admit that we have the right to inflict unnecessary suffering and you destroy the very basis of human society.

It is an age of stir and change, a season of new wine and old bottles. Yet, assuredly, in spite of breakages and waste, a wine worth the drinking is all the time being made.

The French cook; we open tins.

Men are in fact, quite unable to control their own inventions; they at best develop adaptability to the new conditions those inventions create.

Society is built on marriage … marriage and its consequences.

It is by muteness that a dog becomes for one so utterly beyond value; with him one is at peace, where words play no torturing tricks.

I was a really lousy artist as a kid. Too abstract expressionist; or I’d draw a big ram’s head, really messy.

I’m at my best in a messy, middle-of-the-road muddle.

Everything is so chaotic and messy in the world, and I have always felt kind of dirty.

While I have very little to say in favor of sex (it’s vastly overrated, it’s frequently unnecessary, and it’s messy), it is greatly to be preferred to the interminable torments of romantic agony through which two people tear one another limb from limb while professing altruistic devotion.

I always like hair being a little messy because I think there’s something appealing about the whimsy of putting on a gown with any hair or make-up – just stepping into it, and you’re ready.

Family love is messy, clinging, and of an annoying and repetitive pattern, like bad wallpaper.

It was a community like any other, bound by ties deeper than most, and people here went to their deaths as people did anywhere: with great reluctance, dragging the messy jumble of their lives behind them.

Survival is ugly. Healing is messy. Self-love is complicated.