the urgent crowds out the essential.

I have reached the stage now where luxury is not in fine possessions but in carefree possessions, and the greatest luxury of all would be the completely expendable.

Most of us are experts at solving other people's problems, but we generally solve them in terms of our own and the advice we give is seldom for other people but for ourselves.

Enthusiasm is a plant which grows variously in the varying soils of different natures.

leisure is an attitude of mind, not simply remission of work.

If you would be happy all your life, plant a garden.

A garden is one of the few expressions of man's nature that is altogether benign.

It is always one of the tragedies of any relationship, even between people sensitive to each other's moods, that the moments of emotion so rarely coincide.

children are not undeveloped versions of adult people: they are a different race of beings: they are children.

The sorrows we imagine are more profound and inconsolable than real life leaves us time for.

The sorrows of children are profound and unsuspected.

All things are already complete in oneself.

Let sleeping dogs lie — who wants to rouse 'em?

Life: another day, another dolor.

Metaphor impinges on everything, allowing us - poets and non-poets alike - to experience and think about the world in fluid, unusual ways.

Effective psychotherapy works because the therapist continues to grow as a person and as a healer.

A man's body and his mind, with the utmost reverence to both I speak it, are exactly like a jerkin and a jerkin's lining; rumple the one, you rumple the other.

We live in a beauty-obsessed culture, which on one hand is absolutely fabulous, but on the flip side, is also dangerously extreme.

Waiting for inspiration is for amateurs; professionals get to work.

And therefore only the enlightened sovereign and the worthy general who are able to use the most intelligent people as agents are certain to achieve great things.

The difference between me and you is that I do good fiction.