Where women love each other, men learn to smother their mutual dislike.

O may I join the choir invisible of those immortal dead who live again in minds made better by their presence; live in pulses stirred to generosity, in deeds of daring rectitude, in scorn for miserable aims that end with self, in thoughts sublime that pierce the night like stars, and with their mild persistence urge men's search to vaster issues.

Ignorant kindness may have the effect of cruelty; but to be angry with it as if it were direct cruelty would be an ignorant unkindness.

There are robberies that leave man or woman forever beggared of peace and joy, yet kept secret by the sufferer.

...there's never a garden in all the parish but what there's endless waste in it for want o' somebody as could use everything up. It's what I think to myself sometimes, as there need nobody run short o' victuals if the land was made the most on, and there was never a morsel but what could find it's way to a mouth.

It is always good to know, if only in passing, charming human beings. It refreshes one like flowers and woods and clear brooks.

Failure after long perseverance is much grander than never to have a striving good enough to be called a failure.