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

Christmas... is not an external event at all, but a piece of one's home that one carries in one's heart.

To awaken quite alone in a strange town is one of the pleasantest sensations in the world.

If we are strong, and have faith in life and its richness of surprises, and hold the rudder steadily in our hands. I am sure we will sail into quiet and pleasent waters for our old age.

Pain and fear and hunger are effects of causes which can be foreseen and known: but sorrow is a debt which someone else makes for us.

Curiosity is the one thing invincible in Nature.

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

Few are the giants of the soul who actually feel that the human race is their family circle.

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

The great and almost only comfort about being a woman is that one can always pretend to be more stupid than one is and no one is surprised.

To awaken alone in a strange town is one of the pleasantest sensations in the world.

Accuracy is the basis of style. Words dress our thoughts and should fit; and should fit not only in their utterances, but in their implications, their sequences, and their silences, just as in architecture the empty spaces are as important as those that are filled.

Christmas... is not an external event at all but a piece of ones home that one carries in ones heart.

Conventions are like coins an easy way of dealing with the commerce of relations.

The most ominous of fallacies - the belief that things can be kept static by inaction.

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.

Monotony is not to be worshipped as a virtue; nor the marriage bed treated as a coffin for security rather than a couch from which to rise refreshed.

The most ominous of fallacies - the belief that things can be kept static by inaction

The true fruit of travel is perhaps the feeling of being nearly everywhere at home.

Without feeling abashed by my ignorance, I confess that I am absolutely unable to say. In the absence of an appearance of learning, my answer has at least one merit, that of perfect sincerity.

That a great battle must soon be fought no one could doubt; but, in the apparent and perhaps real absence of plan on the part of Lee, it was impossible to foretell the precise scene of the encounter.

Courage is not the absence of despair; it is, rather, the capacity to move ahead in spite of despair.

Peace is not the absence of war, but a virtue based on strength of character.

The absence of alternatives clears the mind marvelously.

With the absence of a flu vaccination last year, I did not take a flu shot; but there is still some immunity that carries over from year to year; but about every 30 years, there is a major change in the genetics of the flu virus.

And as far as false hope, there is no such thing. There is only hope or the absence of hope-nothing else.

The longest absence is less perilous to love than the terrible trials of incessant proximity.

Life has become the ideology of its own absence.

There is a movement to get an international criminal court in the world, voted for by hundreds of states-but with the noticeable absence of the United States of America.

I wish you to inform the Court that my absence, though deliberate, is not intended in any way to be disrespectful. Nor is it prompted by any fear of the punishment which might be inflicted on me.

Where choice begins, Paradise ends, innocence ends, for what is Paradise but the absence of any need to choose this action?

In the absence of that, I am happy to play solo, but I don't think there is any comparison.

For many Americans, including many who are employed, going to the doctor when they fall ill or become injured may not be an option because of the absence of health insurance.

The situation in the region is flammable and may explode at any moment, because of the crucial events and because of the absence of justice in executing the international legitimacy resolutions, regarding the Israeli Arab cause and the oppression on Palestinians by Israelis.

It is the maintenance of slavery by law in a state, not parallels of latitude, that makes its a southern state; and the absence of this, that makes it a northern state.

My dear, the duty that devolved wholly on you in my absence of guiding and expanding the minds of our dear children is a laborious one and a responsible one.

So far as discipline is concerned, freedom means not its absence but the use of higher and more rational forms as contrasted with those that are lower or less rational.

I was court-martial in my absence, and sentenced to death in my absence, so I said they could shoot me in my absence.

Of all the bewildering things about a new country, the absence of human landmarks is one of the most depressing and disheartening.

Instead, in the absence of respect for human rights, science and its offspring technology have been used in this century as brutal instruments for oppression.

When I came back to Dublin I was courtmartialed in my absence and sentenced to death in my absence, so I said they could shoot me in my absence.

Peace is not absence of conflict, it is the ability to handle conflict by peaceful means.

It would be hard to ignore the absence of democracy in any Arab nation.

Grace is the absence of everything that indicates pain or difficulty, hesitation or incongruity.

To observe people in conflict is a necessary part of a child's education. It helps him to understand and accept his own occasional hostilities and to realize that differing opinions need not imply an absence of love.

Coughs seem very common here, especially among the children, though people look strong and healthy, but in the absence of proper statistics one cannot undertake to say whether the district is a healthy one or not.

Absolute liberty is absence of restraint; responsibility is restraint; therefore, the ideally free individual is responsible to himself.

Being solitary is being alone well: being alone luxuriously immersed in doings of your own choice, aware of the fullness of your won presence rather than of the absence of others. Because solitude is an achievement.

Judicious absence is a weapon.