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.

Not perhaps until later life, until the follies, passions, and selfishness of youth have died out, do we . . . recognize the the inestimable blessing, the responsibility awful as sweet, of possessing or of being a friend.

But oh! the blessing it is to have a friend to whom one can speak fearlessly on any subject; with whom one's deepest as well as one's most foolish thoughts come out simply and safely. Oh, the comfort - the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person - having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words, but pouring them all right out, just as they are, chaff and grain together; certain that a faithful hand will take and sift them, keep what is worth keeping, and then with the breath of kindness blow the rest away.

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

Society, in the aggregate, is no fool. It is astonishing what an amount of "eccentricity" it will stand from anybody who takes the bull by the horns, too fearless or too indifferent to think of consequences.

A parent, unlike a poet, is not born - he is made.

The world! It is a word capable of as diverse interpretations or misinterpretations as the thing itself - a thing by various people supposed to belong to heaven, man, or the devil, or alternatively to all three.