My own experience and development deepen every day my conviction that our moral progress may be measured by the degree in which we sympathize with individual suffering and individual joy.

He had the superficial kindness of a good-humored, self-satisfied nature, that fears no rivalry, and has encountered no contrarieties.

It is painful to be told that anything is very fine and not be able to feel that it is fine--something like being blind, while people talk of the sky.

What is your religion? I mean-not what you know about religion but the belief that helps you most?

The select natures who pant after the ideal, and find nothing in pantaloons or petticoats great enough to command their reverence and love, are curiously in unison with the narrowest and pettiest.

Loquacity with tongue or pen is its own reward -- or, punishment.

It is not true that a man's intellectual power is, like the strength of a timber beam, to be measured by its weakest point.