It gradually dawned upon me that there was no one more difficult to please than my mother.

I was a town child, it is true, but that did not prevent me enjoying open-air life, with plants and animals.

A love for humanity came over me, and watered and fertilised the fields of my inner world which had been lying fallow, and this love of humanity vented itself in a vast compassion.

I encountered among my comrades the most varied human traits, from frankness to reserve, from goodness, uprightness and kindness, to brutality and baseness.

Among the delights of Summer were picnics to the woods.

I was not given to looking at life in a rosy light.