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.

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.

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 . ....

Be courteous, be obliging, but don’t give yourself over to be melted down for the benefit of the tallow trade

Our deeds still travel with us from afar, and what we have been makes us what we are.

He was like a cock who thought the sun had risen to hear him crow.

Mr. Poyser had no reason to be ashamed of his leg, and suspected that the growing abuse of top-boots and other fashions tending to disguise the nether limbs had their origin in a pitiable degeneracy...

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...

It always seemed to me a sort of clever stupidity only to have one sort of talent – like a carrier pigeon

You are never too old to be what you might have been.

Death is the king of this world: ‘Tis his park where he breeds life to feed him. Cries of pain are music for his banquet.

Power of generalizing gives men so much the superiority in mistake over the dumb animals.

It is always fatal to have music or poetry interrupted.

Her future, she thought, was likely to be worse than her past, for after her years of contented renunciation, she had slipped back into desire and longing; she found joyless days of distasteful occupation harder...

Yes, the house must be inhabited, and we will see by whom; for imagination is a licensed trespasser: it has no fear of dogs, but may climb over walls and peep in at windows with...

The dull mind, once arriving at an inference that flatters the desire, is rarely able to retain the impression that the notion from which the inference started was purely problematic.

College mostly makes people like bladders—just good for nothing but t’ hold the stuff as is poured into ‘em.

What is opportunity to the man who can’t use it?

I tell you there isn’t a thing under the sun that needs to be done at all, but what a man can do better than a woman, unless it’s bearing children, and they do that...

Habit is the beneficent harness of routine which enables silly men to live respectfully and unhappy men to live calmly

In spite of his practical ability, some of his experience had petrified into maxims and quotations.

It was not that she was out of temper, but that the world was not equal to the demands of her fine organism.

If we use common words on a great occasion, they are the more striking, because they are felt at once to have a particular meaning, like old banners, or everyday clothes, hung up in a...