I never enter a new company without the hope that I may discover a friend, perhaps the friend, sitting there with an expectant smile. That hope survives a thousand disappointments.
I don’t like authority, at least I don’t like other people’s authority.
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.
People who deal with life generously and large-heartedly go on multiplying relationships to the end.
The friend is the person whom one is in need of and by whom one is needed.
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.
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!
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.
The moment that any life, however good, stifles you, you may be sure it isn’t your real life.
Congenial labor is essence of happiness.
Keeping up appearances is the most expensive thing in the world.
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 expect that all of us get pretty much what we deserve of appreciation.
All the best stories in the world are but one story in reality – the story of escape. It is the only thing which interests us all and at all times, how to escape.
It seems sometimes as if one were powerless to do any more from within to overcome troubles, and that help must come from without.
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.
I believe in instinct, not reason. When reason is right, nine times out of ten it is impotent, and when it prevails, nine times out of ten it is wrong.
Readjusting is a painful process, but most of us need it at one time or another.
There remain times when one can only endure. One lives on, one doesn’t die, and the only thing that one can do, is to fill one’s mind and time as far as possible with the concerns of other people. It doesn’t bring immediate peace, but it brings the dawn nearer.
I have known some quite good people who were unhappy, but never an interested person who was unhappy.