“If the gooseberry said: 'I haven't the heart to be a real proper gooseberry because if everyone were a gooseberry the world wouldn't continue to exist' this would be a stupid argument and the world would be deprived of a useful fruit. If you are called upon to be a 'gooseberry' in all the senses--pleasant or ludicrous--of the word, you should be one with all your heart and soul, without a backward glance.”

“Often, we melt into our ecstasies as though they were jams, as though we were sinking into syrupy bowls of gooseberries, of raspberries, of bilberries.”

“I should like to know what sacrifices they make. I think it's the children who make the sacrifices. When I want to eat gooseberries and am not allowed to, the sacrifice is _mine_ not _Mother's_.”

“How would this do you, Bingo?" I said at length. "A few plovers' eggs to weigh in with, a cup of soup, a touch of cold salmon, some cold curry, and a splash of gooseberry tart and cream with a bite of cheese to finish?"I don't know that I had expected the man actually to scream with delight, though I had picked the items from my knowledge of his pet dishes, but I had expected him to say something.”

“When you want something with all your heart, that's when you are closest to the Soul of the World.... when you love someone with all your heart, that's when you are transformed.""Everything on earth is being continuously transformed, because the earth is alive... and it has a soul. We are part of that soul, so we rarely recognize that it is working for us.... we continue to change as change is the nature of man. No one is "just this way". That is who they are today - it will not be who they are tomorrow.”

“All should be laid open to you without reserve, for there is not a truth existing which I fear, or would wish unknown to the whole world.”