I’ve never any pity for conceited people, because I think they carry their comfort about with them

It will never rain roses: when we want to have more roses we must plant more trees.

It is a common enough case, that of a man being suddenly captivated by a woman nearly the opposite of his ideal.

Every woman is supposed to have the same set of motives, or else to be a monster.

An age at which many men are not quite common – at which they are hopeful of achievement, resolute in avoidance, thinking that Mammon shall never put a bit in their mouths and get astride...

The beginning of compunction is the beginning of a new life.

A toddling little girl is a centre of common feeling which makes the most dissimilar people understand each other.

(visions) of strange cities, of sandy plains, of gigantic ruins, of midnight skies with strange bright constellations, of mountain-passes, of grassy nooks flecked with the afternoon sunshine through the boughs: I was in the midst...

O may I join the choir invisibleOf those immortal dead who live againIn minds made better by their presence; liveIn pulses stirred to generosity,In deeds of daring rectitude…

Let even an affectionate Goliath get himself tied to a small tender thing, dreading to hurt it by pulling, and dreading still more to snap the cord, and which of the two, pray, will be...

But the vicar of St. Botolph’s had certainly escaped the slightest tincture of the Pharisee, and by dint of admitting to himself that he was too much as other men were, he had become remarkably...

A man carries within him the germ of his most exceptional action; and if we wise people make eminent fools of ourselves on any particular occasion, we must endure the legitimate conclusion that we carry...

Any coward can fight a battle when he’s sure of winning; but give me the man who has pluck to fight when he’s sure of losing. That’s my way, sir; and there are many victories...

What a wretched lot of old shrivelled creatures we shall be by-and-by. Never mind- the uglier we get in the eyes of others, the lovelier we shall be to each other; that has always been...

Our instructed vagrancy, which has hardly time to linger by the hedgerows, but runs away early to the tropics, and is at home with palms and banyans -which is nourished on books of travel, and...

Childhood has no forebodings; but then, it is soothed by no memories of outlived sorrow

She was perfectly quiet now, but not asleep–only soothed by sweet porridge and warmth into that wide-gazing calm which makes us older human beings, with our inward turmoil, feel a certain awe in the presence...

Do we not wile away moments of inanity or fatigued waiting by repeating some trivial movement or sound, until the repetition has bred a want, which is incipient habit?

Our deeds determine us, as much as we determine our deeds.

Men’s men: gentle or simple, they’re much of a muchness

Your dunce who can’t do his sums always has a taste for the infinite.

Breed is stronger than pasture.

Can anything be more disgusting than to hear people called ‘educated’ making small jokes about eating ham, and showing themselves empty of any real knowledge as to the relation of their own social and religious...

Blessed is the influence of one true, loving human soul on another.

There 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 bills, or babies...

For what is love itself, for the one we love best? – an enfolding of immeasurable cares which yet are better than any joys outside our love.

For there is no creature whose inward being is so strong that it is not greatly determined by what lies outside it.

Pride only helps us to be generous; it never makes us so, any more than vanity makes us witty.

Her profile as well as her stature and bearing seemed to gain the more dignity from her plain garments, which by the side of provincial fashion gave her the impressiveness of a fine quotation from...

Formerly, his heart had been as a locked casket with its treasure inside; but now the casket was empty, and the lock was broken. Left groping in darkness, with his prop utterly gone, Silas had...

It is generally a feminine eye that first detects the moral deficiencies hidden under the ”dear deceit” of beauty.

The strongest principle of growth lies in the human choice.

Jealousy is never satisfied with anything short of an omniscience that would detect the subtlest fold of the heart.

Lohengrin’ to us ordinary mortals seemed something like the whistling of the wind through the keyholes of a cathedral, which has a dreamy charm for a little while, but by and by you long for...

Instead of trying to still his fears, he encouraged them, with that superstitious impression which clings to us all, that if we expect evil very strongly it is the less likely to come . ....

The yoke a man creates for himself by wrong-doing will breed hate in the kindliest nature . . .

Iteration, like friction, is likely to generate heat instead of progress

‘Tis God gives skill, but not without men’s hand: He could not make Antonio Stradivarius’s violins without Antonio.

The select natures who pant after the ideal, and find nothing in pantaloons or petticoats great enough to command their reverence and love, are curiously in unison with the narrowest and pettiest.

Truth has rough flavours if we bite it through.

Is not this a true autumn day? Just the still melancholy that I love – that makes life and nature harmonise. The birds are consulting about their migrations, the trees are putting on the hectic...

Bodily haste and exertion usually leave our thoughts very much at the mercy of our feelings and imagination.

We are overhasty to speak as if God did not manifest himself by our silent feeling, and make his love felt through ours.

For we all of us, grave or light, get our thoughts entangled in metaphors, and act fatally on the strength of them.

There’s no work so tirin’ as danglin’ about an’ starin’ an’ not rightly knowin’ what you’re goin’ to do next; and keepin’ your face i’ smilin’ order like a grocer o’ market-day for fear people...

Play not with paradoxes. That caustic which you handle in order to scorch others may happen to sear your own fingers and make them dead to the quality of things.

Our impartiality is kept for abstract merit and demerit, which none of us ever saw.

Quarrel? Nonsense; we have not quarreled. If one is not to get into a rage sometimes, what is the good of being friends?

We must not inquire too curiously into motives… They are apt to become feeble in the utterance: the aroma is mixed with the grosser air. We must keep the germinating grain away from the light.

It is in these acts called trivialities that the seeds of joy are forever wasted, until men and women look round with haggard faces at the devastation their own waste has made, and say, the...