To have loved and lost, either by that total disenchantment which leaves compassion as the sole substitute for love which can exist no more, or by the slow torment which is obliged to let go day by day all that constitutes the diviner part of love - namely, reverence, belief, and trust, yet clings desperately to the only thing left it, a long-suffering apologetic tenderness - this lot is probably the hardest any woman can have to bear.

For truly, the greatest of all external blessings is it to be able to lean your heart against another heart, faithful, tender, true, and tried, and record with a thankfulness that years deepen instead of diminishing, "I have got a friend!"

The life of action is nobler than the life of thought.

Happiness is not an end - it is only a means, and adjunct, a consequence. The Omnipotent Himself could never be supposed by any, save those who out of their own human selfishness construct the attributes of Divinity, to be absorbed throughout eternity in the contemplation of His own ineffable bliss, were it not identical with His ineffable goodness and love.

When faith and hope fail, as they do sometimes, we must try charity, which is love in action. We must speculate no more on our duty, but simply do it. When we have done it, however blindly, perhaps Heaven will show us why.

there is nothing so absolute as the tyranny of weakness.

To accept the inevitable; neither to struggle against it nor murmur at it-this is the great lesson of life.