“What feeling is so nice as a child's hand in yours? So small, so soft and warm, like a kitten huddling in the shelter of your clasp.”

“It comes every year and will go on forever. And along with Christmas belong the keepsakes and the customs. Those humble, everyday things a mother clings to, and ponders, like Mary in the secret spaces of her heart.”

“A vast tenderness swept him, and a great reverence. Now she belonged to him and her face was his to shield. In regret and joy he draped her, his personal Torah, which now must be returned to the ark to await their covenant.”

“There's nothing so unreliable as figures, and everybody but a mathematician knows that. Figures lie right to your face.”

“Flattery is so necessary to all of us that we flatter one another to be flattered in return”

“Even as individuals become families and families become communities, and communities become nations, so eventually must the nations draw together in peace.”

“He liked to feel the soft little hand clasping his own fingers, so big and coarse in comparison, and happily so strong. For in the child's weakness he felt an infinite pathos; a being so entirely helpless, so utterly dependent upon others' love, standing there amid a world of cruelties, smiling and trustful.”