“Travel does what good novelists also do to the life of everyday, placing it like a picture in a frame or a gem in its setting, so that the intrinsic qualities are made more clear. Travel does this with the very stuff that everyday life is made of, giving to it the sharp contour and meaning of art.”

“Absence is one of the most useful ingredients of family life, and to dose it rightly is an art like any other.”

“One life is an absurdly small allowance.”

“Solitude, I reflected, is the one deep necessity of the human spirit to which adequate recognition is never given in our codes. It is looked upon as a discipline or penance, but hardly ever as the indispensable, pleasant ingredient it is to ordinary life, and from this want of recognition come half our domestic troubles.”

“The symbol is greater than visible substance. . . . Unhappy the land that has no symbols, or that chooses their meaning without great care.”

“Love of learning is a pleasant and universal bond since it deals with what one is and not what one has.”

“There can be no happiness if the things we believe in are different from the things we do.”