Parents can only advise their children or point them in the right direction. Ultimately people shape their own characters.
I don't have much in the way of money or worldly possessions, I'm not beautiful, intelligent or clever, but I'm happy, and I intend to stay that way! I was born happy, I love people, I have a trusting nature, and I'd like everyone else to be happy too.
Despite everything, I believe that people are really good at heart.
One gets on better in life if one is not over modest.
I wonder if anyone can ever succeed in making their children content.
Then I fall asleep with a stupid feeling of wishing to be different from what I am or from what I want to be; perhaps to behave differently from the way I want to behave or do behave.
I do my best to please everybody, far more than they’d ever guess. I try to laugh it all off, because I don’t want to let them see my trouble.
Boys will be boys. And even that wouldn’t matter if only we could prevent girls from being girls.
Friday, December 10, 1942.
Wednesday, July 7, 1943.
I thanked the interesting old lady and I now know that so-called interesting men owe their reputation to their looks alone.
When I write I can shake off all my cares. My sorrow disappears, my spirits are revived! But, and that’s a big question, will I ever be able to write something great, will I ever become a journalist or a writer?
Actually, what you’re hoping to find when you’re depressed is happiness. Even if you miss a lot because you have no one to talk to, once you’ve found your own inner happiness, you’ll never lose it. I don’t mean this in terms of material things, but in a spiritual sense. I believe that once your own inner happiness has been found, it might go underground for a while, but it will never be lost!
Take a look,” I said. “If you want to find inner happiness, go outside on a nice day with lots of sun and blue sky. Even if you stand at a window and look out over the city at the cloudless sky, like we’re doing now, you’ll eventually find happiness.
First, there’s the rose – the queen of the flowers; she’s so beautiful and her fragrance is so intoxicating that it goes to everyone’s head, most of all her own. The rose is beautiful, sweet-smelling and elegant, but if things aren’t going her way, she shows her thorns. She’s like a spoiled child – beautiful, elegant and seemingly nice as can be, but if you touch her or talk to someone else so that she’s no longer the center of attention, out come her claws.
Yes, in the sense that I felt a certain contentment. Not always, mind you. I moaned and groaned from time to time. But I was never downright depressed again, probably because I realized that sadness comes from feeling sorry for yourself and happiness from joy.
Most people are blinded by the outer glow. If they’d been allowed to vote, very few people would have picked the rose. The rose is majestic and beautiful, and just as in the real world, no one asks the flowers whether a bloom which is outwardly less pretty might actually be inwardly more beautiful and more fit to rule.
After that I was free to enjoy the rest of my unforgettable vacation, and now that I had seen the life of the stars up close, I was cured once and for all of my delusions of fame.
They were pale, and didn’t say a word when Cady entered the room. Had they been sitting like this every night for months? Seeing all those pale and frightened faces was awful. With each bang of an outside door, a shock went through everyone in the room, as if the door to life itself were symbolically being slammed shut.
Do any of those people in their warm and cozy living rooms have any idea what kind of life a beggar leads? Do any of those “good” and “kind” people ever wonder about the lives of so many of the children and adults around them? Granted, everyone has given a coin to a beggar at some time or another, though they usually just shove it into his hand and slam the door.
Believe me, if you’ve been shut up for a year and a half, it can get to be too much for you sometimes. But feelings can’t be ignored, no matter how unjust or ungrateful they seem.