miss my daily Mass, and have a superstitious feeling that anything may happen on the days I don't go. However, nothing in particular has.

It is a common delusion that you make things better by talking about them.

Life, for all its agonies...is exciting and beautiful, amusing and artful and endearing...and whatever is to come after it -- we shall not have this life again.

So they left the subject and played croquet, which is a very good game for people who are annoyed with one another, giving many opportunities for venting rancor.

At the worst, a house unkept cannot be so distressing as a life unlived.

Once you get to know your neighbors, you are no longer free, you are all tangled up, you have to stop and speak when you are out and you never feel safe when you are in.

The great and recurrent question about Abroad is, is it worth the trouble of getting there?

Human passions against eternal laws -- that is the everlasting conflict.

To lunch with the important ... that should be the daily goal of those for whom life is not a playground but a ladder.

The impulse to ask questions is among the more primitive human lusts.

As to the family, I have never understood how that fits in with the other ideals -- or, indeed, why it should be an ideal at all.

He smelled the salt on his own lips and the orange blossoms in her hair. Real ones, he could see now, tucked into the curls with cheap, native combs. The sight of them gave him hope.

Education must be an equal opportunity for all.

You can't exploit a woman who has based her entire career on exploiting herself.

When presented with an open door in your job, drive a Mack truck through it.

While some consider God's standards as too confining, a true believer sees them as loving and freeing.

He who sows courtesy reaps friendship and he who plants kindness gathers love.

Condition de l'homme: inconstance, ennui, inquie tude. Man's condition. Inconstancy, boredom, anxiety.

All fortune is good fortune; for it either rewards, disciplines, amends, or punishes, and so is either useful or just.

To aid life, leaving it free, however, that is the basic task of the educator.