All our talents increase in the using, and every faculty, both good and bad, strengthens by exercise.

No one can be happy in eternal solitude.

Are you hero enough to unite yourself to one whom you know to be suspected and despised by all around you, and identify your interests and your honor with hers?

What a fool you must be," said my head to my heart, or my sterner to my softer self.

There are great books in this world and great worlds in books.

I would rather have your friendship than the love of any other woman in the world.

The bud, though plucked, would not be withered, only transplanted to a fitter soil to ripen and blow beneath a brighter sun; and though I might not cherish and watch my child's unfolding intellect, he would be snatched away from all the suffering and sins of earth; and my understanding tells me this would be no great evil; but my heart shrinks from the contemplation of such a possibility, and whispers I could not bear to see him die.