there is nothing so absolute as the tyranny of weakness.

If I had to write a book, I could not find anything in the world worth saying - as is indeed the case with many voluminous authors.

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

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.

Love never stands still; it must inevitably be either growing or decaying - especially the love of marriage.

One cannot make oneself, but one can sometimes help a little in the making of somebody else. It is well.

There can be - there ought to be - no medium course; a love-affair is either sober earnest or contemptible folly, if not wickedness: to gossip about it is, in the first instance, intrusive, unkind, or dangerous; in the second, simply silly.