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I used to have this toy, a magic slate. You wrote or drew on it and then, just by pulling up the plastic cover, everything you did disappeared and you could start new. Maybe everyone feels that on New Year's Eve: They can pull up the magic sheet and rewrite their lives.

Yes, I am a prisoner of sorts, but my prison isn't the house. It's my own thoughts that lock me up!

We're better off not worrying about ourselves, and to do that, we have to worry about others.

There are two types of patience. One is exercised in hard work and the other in idleness. Patience with hard work is the one that moves mountains. Patience in idleness moves nothing, not even cobwebs.

Was I prone to sadness and melancholy? How could anyone like that? It wasn't that I wanted it; it was that I was so used to hard rains, I couldn't help expecting a cloudburst every time something nice happened and sunshine beamed down over me.

Sometimes doing the right thing does take more courage, but the feeling it gives you deep inside makes it worth it.

I remembered Grandmere Catherine used to tell me your first impressions about people usually prove to be the truest because your heart is the first to react.

Being rich and coming from a distinguished family background doesn't guarantee happiness, Abby. In fact, it might make happiness harder to find because you have to live up to akk that expectation.

We had been separated by time and distance and events so long, it was as if we had to get to know each other again, but if it was possible to fall in love with the same person twice, I did.

Whatever doesn't destroy you, makes you stronger. Hardships have a way of toughening us, if they don't kill us.

But when one does not complain, and when one wants to master oneself with a tyrant__ grip _ one__ faculties rise in revolt _ and one pays for outward calm with an almost unbearable inner struggle.