There is much said about the wickedness of doing evil that good may come. Alas! there is such a thing as doing good that evil may come.

the matrimonial shoe pinches me.

A poverty that is universal may be cheerfully borne; it is an individual poverty that is painful and humiliating.

Whatever the scientists may say, if we take the supernatural out of life, we leave only the unnatural.

When a man has calamity upon calamity the world generally concludes that he must be a very wicked man to deserve them. Perhaps the world is right; but it is also just possible that the world ... may be wrong.

... 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.

a little misgiving in the beginning of things, means much regret in the end of them.