“...to know an other's interior life you are his confessor or a writer - the one is admitted freely, the other intrudes by discerning of spirits ”

“He who knows other men is discerning;”

“Did you not look upon the world this morning and imagine it as the boy might see it? And did you not recognize the mist and the dew and the birdsong as elements not of a place or a time but of a spirit? And did you not envy the boy his spirit? For you know there can be no power over him who freely gives what another would take. Such a one has the capacity to love. Freely, naively, to say I do.”

“O, because I have had only that kind of benevolence which consists in lying on a sofa, and cursing the church and clergy for not being martyrs and confessors. One can see, you know, very easily, how others ought to be martyrs. -Augustine St. Clare”

“The good parts of a book may be only something a writer is lucky enough to overhear or it may be the wreck of his whole damn life and one is as good as the other.”

“One of the greatest joys of not judging others is becoming capable of discerning God's will in a difficult situation.”