“This assumption that she need look for no more devotion now that her beauty had passed proceeded from the fact that she had never realized any love save love as passion. Such love, though it expends itself in generosity and thoughtfulness, though it give birth to visions and to great poetry, remains among the sharpest expressions of self-interest. Not until it has passed through a long servitude, through its own self-hatred, through mockery, through great doubts, can it take its place among the loyalties. Many who have spent a lifetime in it can tell us less of love than the child that lost a dog yesterday.”

“Everybody has a right to their own troubles.”

“The more decisions that you are forced to make alone, the more you are aware of your freedom to choose.”

“Seek the lofty by reading, hearing and seeing great work at some moment every day.”

“Marriage is a bribe to make the housekeeper think she's a householder.”

“Many who have spent a lifetime in it can tell us less of love than the child that lost a dog yesterday.”

“I know that every good and excellent thing in the world stands moment by moment on the razor-edge of danger and must be fought for.”

“The best thing about animals is that they don't talk much.”

“When God loves a creature he wants the creature to know the highest happiness and the deepest misery He wants him to know all that being alive can bring. That is his best gift. There is no happiness save in understanding the whole.”

“Love is an energy which exists of itself. It is its own value.”

“Hope, like faith, is nothing if it is not courageous; it is nothing if it is not ridiculous.”