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.
Dinah Maria Murlock CraikDown in the deep, up in the sky , I see them always, far or nigh, And I shall see them till I die The old familiar faces.
Dinah Maria Murlock CraikIt is astonishing what a lot of odd minutes one can catch during the day, if one really sets about it.
Dinah Maria Murlock CraikNot 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.
Dinah Maria Murlock CraikThis is practically the language used to fallen women, and chiefly by their own sex: "God may forgive you, but we never can!" - a declaration which, however common, in spirit if not in substance, is, when one comes to analyse it, unparalleled in its arrogance of blasphemy. That for a single offence, however grave, a whole life should be blasted, is a doctrine repugnant even to Nature's own dealings in the visible world.
Dinah Maria Murlock Craik