And wilt thou have me fashion into speech The love I bear thee, finding words enough, And hold the torch out, while the winds are rough, Between our faces, to cast light on each? - I dropt it at thy feet. I cannot teach My hand to hold my spirits so far off From myself--me--that I should bring thee proof In words, of love hid in me out of reach. Nay, let the silence of my womanhood Commend my woman-love to thy belief, - Seeing that I stand unwon, however wooed, And rend the garment of my life, in brief, By a most dauntless, voiceless fortitude, Lest one touch of this heart convey its grief.

How many desolate creatures on the earth have learnt the simple dues of fellowship and social comfort, in a hospital.

You're something between a dream and a miracle.

The world's male chivalry has perished out, but women are knights-errant to the last; and, if Cervantes had been greater still, he had made his Don a Donna.

An ignorance of means may minister to greatness, but an ignorance of aims make it impossible to be great at all.

My patience has dreadful chilblains from standing so long on a monument.

It is not merely the likeness which is precious... but the association and the sense of nearness involved in the thing... the fact of the very shadow of the person lying there fixed forever! It is the very sanctification of portraits I think - and it is not at all monstrous in me to say that I would rather have such a memorial of one I dearly loved, than the noblest Artist's work ever produced.