All we do is to look after the opinions and learning of others: we ought to make them our own.

The greatest thing in the world is to know how to belong to oneself.

On the highest throne in the world, we still sit only on our own bottom.

I quote others only in order the better to express myself.

Learned we may be with another man's learning: we can only be wise with wisdom of our own.

If I speak of myself in different ways, that is because I look at myself in different ways.

Why do people respect the package rather than the man?

The greater part of the world's troubles are due to questions of grammar.

[Marriage] happens as with cages: the birds without despair to get in, and those within despair of getting out.

The thing I fear most is fear.

I am afraid that our eyes are bigger than our stomachs, and that we have more curiosity than understanding. We grasp at everything, but catch nothing except wind.

Joy is a practice, not an involuntary state.

If I see darkness in the Church I bring light to it.

Still I promise myself, "Next time I will do better" in the all-too-human conceit that I will always be offered a "next time.

Because as much as she thought she wanted safety, wanted security and reliability, the kiss had shifted something in her.

Failure is an enigma. You worry about it, and it teaches you something.

Not sure of my place in the world (still up for debate) and not sure what I wanted to do with my life (not really up for debate).

Oh yes, we're going to brawl, baby. Over you. Again.

It is better to be a young June-bug than an old bird of paradise.

Well, you know, in the fundamentalist milieu of the Afrikaners, there was a sense that they were a chosen people, that they were bringing civilization to the blacks.

I decided that Europeans and Americans are like men and women: they understand each other worse, and it matters less, than either of them suppose.