She is free not by disobeying the rules but by obeying them.

Teach me to treat all that comes to me with peace of soul and with firm conviction that Your will governs all.

Loneliness comes over us sometimes as a sudden tide. It is one of the terms of our humanness, and, in a sense, therefore, incurable. Yet I have found peace in my loneliest times not only through acceptance of the situation, but through making it an offering to God, who can transfigure it into something for the good of others.

She had the consciousness of being nine-and-twenty to give her some regrets and some apprehensions; she was fully satisfied of being still quite as handsome as ever, but she felt her approach to the years of danger, and would have rejoiced to be certain of being properly solicited by baronet-blood within the next twelvemonth or two.

Unless a man is prepared to ask a woman to be his wife, what right has he to claim her exclusive attention? Unless she has been asked to marry him, why would a sensible woman promise any man her exclusive attention? If, when the time has come for a commitment, he is not man enough to ask her to marry him, she should give him no reason to presume that she belongs to him.

If all struggles and sufferings were eliminated, the spirit would no more reach maturity than would the child.

Nothing trains and teaches so powerfully as love. Love attracts. it does not coerce. If the aim of parents is to teach their children to love God they must show their love for Him by loving each other and loving the children.