the breed is more than the pasture. As you know, the cuckoo lays her eggs in any bird's nest; it may be hatched among blackbirds or robins or thrushes, but it is always a cuckoo. ... a man cannot deliver himself from his ancestors.

... though mathematics may teach a man how to build a bridge, it is what the Scotch Universities call the humanities, that teach him to be civil and sweet-tempered.

the matrimonial shoe pinches me.

Laughter is always fatal to feeling.

... good and evil are so interwoven in life that every good, traced up far enough, is found to involve evil. This is the great mystery of life.

All changes are more or less tinged with melancholy, for what we are leaving behind is part of ourselves.

There is no corner too quiet, or too far away, for a woman to make sorrow in it.