We need the slower and more lasting stimulus of solitary reading as a relief from the pressure on eye, ear and nerves of the torrent of information and entertainment pouring from ever-open electronic jaws. It could end by stupefying us.

There is only one world the world pressing against you this minute.

Hope is a talent like any other.

For what I have received may the Lord make me truly thankful. And more truly for what I have not received.

Happiness comes of the capacity to feel deeply, to enjoy simply, to think freely, to risk life, to be needed.

The only way to live is to accept each minute as an unrepeatable miracle, which is exactly what it is: a miracle and unrepeatable.

The impossible talked of is less impossible from the moment words are laid to it.

Language is memory and metaphor.

Think of all the really successful men and women you know. Do you know a single one who didn’t learn very young the trick of calling attention to himself in the right quarters?