There are answers which, in turning away wrath, only send it to the other end of the room, and to have a discussion coolly waived when you feel that justice is all on your own...

Each position has its corresponding duties.

Knowledge slowly builds up what Ignorance in an hour pulls down

It is seldom that the miserable of the world can help regarding their misery as a wrong inflicted by those who are less miserable.

All meanings, we know, depend on the key of interpretation.

The finest language is mostly made up of simple unimposing words.

In the multitude of middle-aged men who go about their vocations in a daily course determined for them much in the same way as the tie of their cravats, there is always a good number...

There are many victories worse than a defeat.

[T]here is one order of beauty which seems made to turn heads. . . . It is a beauty like that of kittens, or very small downy ducks making gentle rippling noises with their soft...

In the vain laughter of folly wisdom hears half its applause.

That is the way with us when we have any uneasy jealousy in our disposition: if our talents are chiefly of the burrowing kind, our honey-sipping cousin (whom we have grave reasons for objecting to)...

Most of us who turn to any subject with love remember some morning or evening hour when we got on a high stool to reach down an untried volume, or sat with parted lips listening...

mysterious money had stood to him as the symbol of earthly good, and the immediate object of toil. He had seemed to love it little in the years when every penny had its purpose for...

Even people whose lives have been made various by learning sometimes find it hard to keep a fast hold on their habitual views of life, on their faith in the Invisible – nay, on the...

Let a prejudice be bequeathed, carried in the air, adopted by hearsay, caught in through the eye,–however it may come, these minds will give it a habitation; it is something to assert strongly and bravely,...

But indefinite visions of ambition are weak against the ease of doing what is habitual or beguilingly agreeable; and we all know the difficulty of carrying out a resolve when we secretly long that it...

Our passions do not live apart in locked chambers but dress in their small wardrobe of notions, bring their provisions to a common table and mess together, feeding out of the common store according to...

Where women love each other, men learn to smother their mutual dislike.

There is no despair so absolute as that which comes with the first moments of our first great sorrow, when we have not yet known what it is to have suffered and be healed, to...

It is possible to have a strong self-love without any self-satisfaction, rather with a self-discontent which is the more intense because one’s own little core of egoistic sensibility is a supreme care.

In the love of a brave and faithful man there is always a strain of maternal tenderness; he gives out again those beams of protecting fondness which were shed on him as he lay on...

When one is grateful for something too good for common thanks, writing is less unsatisfactory than speech – one does not, at least, hear how inadequate the words are

Is it not rather what we expect in men, that they should have numerous strands of experience lying side by side and never compare them with each other?

That big muscular frame of his held plenty of animal courage, but helped him to no decision when the dangers to be braved were such as could neither be knocked down nor throttled.

Science is properly more scrupulous than dogma. Dogma gives a charter to mistake, but the very breath of science is a contest with mistake, and must keep the conscience alive.

It had never occurred to him that he should live in any other than what he would have called an ordinary way, with green glasses for hock, and excellent waiting at table. In warming himself...

What do we live for, if it is not to make life less difficult for each other?

Our deeds determine us, as long as we determine our deeds

I desire no future that will break the ties of the past.

It is curious what patches of hardness and tenderness lie side by side in men’s dispositions. I suppose he has some test by which he finds out whom Heaven cares for.

Ignorance gives one a large range of probabilities.

what secular avocation on earth was there for a young man (whose friends could not get him an ‘appointment’) which was at once gentlemanly, lucrative, and to be followed without special knowledge?

How could a man be satisfied with a decision between such alternatives and under such circumstances? No more than he can be satisfied with his hat, which he’s chosen from among such shapes as the...

With memory set smarting like a reopened wound, a man’s past is not simply a dead history, an outworn preparation of the present: it is not a repented error shaken loose from the life: it...

Failure after long perseverance is much grander than never to have a striving good enough to be called a failure.

It’s them that takes advantage that get advantage in this world

More helpful than all wisdom is one draught of simple pity that will not forsake us

That’s what a man wants in a wife, mostly; he wants to make sure one fool tells him he’s wise.

If youth is the season of hope, it is often so only in the sense that our elders are hopeful about us; for no age is so apt as youth to think its emotions, partings,...

To act with doubleness towards a man whose own conduct was double, was so near an approach to virtue that it deserved to be called by no meaner name than diplomacy.

I fancy my father thought me an odd child, and had little fondness for me; though he was very careful in fulfilling what he regarded as a parent’s duties. But he was already past the...

How can a man’s candour be seen in all its lustre unless he has a few failings to talk of? But he had an agreeable confidence that his faults were all of a generous kind—impetuous,...

Duty has a trick of behaving unexpectedly — something like a heavy friend whom we have amiably asked to visit us, and who breaks his leg within our gates.

In our instinctive rebellion against pain, we are children again, and demand an active will to wreak our vengeance on.

Does any one suppose that private prayer is necessarily candid—necessarily goes to the roots of action? Private prayer is inaudible speech, and speech is representative: who can represent himself just as he is, even in...

When a tender affection has been storing itself in us through many of our years, the idea that we could accept any exchange for it seems to be a cheapening of our lives. And we...

It’s easy finding reasons why other folks should be patient.

When a homemaking aunt scolds a niece for following her evangelistic passion instead of domestic pursuits, her reply is interesting. First, she clarifies that God’s individual call on her doesn’t condemn those in more conventional...

The happiest women, like the happiest nations, have no history

`Character,’ says Novalis, in one of his questionable aphorisms – `character is destiny.’