Great Throughts Treasury

"“How many times in our comfortable lives,” I asked myself, “have we been moved to rise at half-past two of a winter night to feast and give thanks because we have so lived that we are suddenly pierced to the heart with the sheer blessedness of everyday existence?”"

"Freedom is not worth fighting for if it means no more than license for everyone to get as much as he can for himself."

"A mother is not a person to lean on, but a person to make leaning unnecessary."

"How he loathed his life-long slavery to the clock, that pervasive intimate negative opposed to every spontaneous impulse. It's the clock that is the nay-sayer to life, he thought"

"It is not good for all our wishes to be filled; through sickness we recognize the value of health; through evil, the value of good; through hunger, the value of food; through exertion, the value of rest."

"If we would give, just once, the same amount of reflection to what we want out of life that we give to the question of what to do with a two weeks’ vacation, we would be startled at our false standards and the aimless procession of our busy days."

"Some people think that doctors and nurses can put scrambled eggs back into the shell."

"One of the many things nobody ever tells you about middle age is that it's such a nice change from being young."

"Subdue your appetites, my dears, and you've conquered human nature ."

"There are two ways to meet life; you may refuse to care until indifference becomes a habit, a defensive armor, and you are safe - but bored. Or you can care greatly, live greatly, until life breaks you on its wheel."

"She was scrubbing furiously at a line of grease spots which led from the stove towards the door to the dining-room. That was where Henry had held the platter tilted as he carried the steak in yesterday. And yet if she had warned him once about that, she had a thousand times!"

"Those who love deeply never grow old; they may die of old age, but they die young."