“Those we love are entitled to resent the allowances we make for them.”

“Memories have ways of becoming independent of the reality they evoke. They can soften us against those we were deeply hurt by or they can make us resent those we once accepted and loved unconditionally.”

“The most attractive are not those who allow us to kiss them at once [we soon feel ungrateful] or those who never allow us to kiss them [we soon forget them], but those who coyly lead us between the two extremes.”

“It made her pure, and those we love must be pure, otherwise we can't love them. But loving a person is also making her pure. (p. 189)”

“Judging others makes us blind, whereas love is illuminating. By judging others we blind ourselves to our own evil and to the grace which others are just as entitled to as we are.”

“We should make it a rule never to have half confidences. They always embarrass those who give them, and dissatisfy those who receive them. They shed an uncertain light on what we want hidden, increase curiosity, entitling the recipients to know more, giving them leave to consider themselves free to talk of what they have guessed. It is far safer and more honest to tell nothing than to be silent when we have begun to tell.”

“The beginning of love is to let those we love be perfectly themselves, and not to twist them to… fit our own image. Otherwise we love only the reflection of ourselves we find in them.”

“We all love best not those who offend us least, nor those who have done most for us, but those who make it most easy for us to forgive them.”

“Ghosts are memories, and we carry them because those we love do not leave the world”

“We are bound to those we love by their imperfections — their perfections help us to explain them to others.”