No one could have been more surprised than I at my successes, and yet deep within me there was acknowledgment that had I not succeeded, I would have been equally surprised.

To be alive is sufficient evidence that we are needed in the world. Otherwise we wouldn't be here.

The steadily inward look leads us all to death, nations as well as persons, and is equally infantile in them all. Perhaps the most useful thing I have learned in my lifetime is that the process of maturing gradually turns the mind away from the small-self to the greater-self that is only served by serving others.

Life pulls at bewildered humanity in so many ways! Blessed is the woman who makes her life a career of stimulating the courage of others.

The hope of any nation lies in the personal qualities of its individual members.

Try to think of your thoughts as boomerangs - that is actually what they are - except that our thoughts multiply and each returns to us with a brood like itself.

People will invite you and seek you constantly if you learn how to give them the extreme pleasure of being clever. People adore the one who encourages them to display their conversational wares and admires the display.

The very thing that seems to impede your progress can often be turned to account for you.

Time is a friend - perhaps the best one we shall ever have. ... Time is a now - and there is only now. Memories look backward. Hope looks ahead. But there is in reality only now.

Probably one of the reasons why gushing is so unattractive is that it leaves nothing for the listener to do.

they're the sort of people one invites to lunch or tea, but never to dinner.

Flirting is a cheap, dangerous shortcut to get something you can't hold after you get it.