Children demand that their heroes should be freckle less, and easily believe them so: perhaps a first discovery to the contrary is less revolutionary shock to a passionate child than the threatened downfall of habitual beliefs which makes the world seem to totter for us in maturer life.

Excellence encourages one about life generally; it shows the spiritual wealth of the world.

She thought it was part of the hardship of her life that there was laid upon her the burthen of larger wants than others seemed to feel – that she had to endure this wide hopeless yearning for that something, whatever it was, that was greatest and best on this earth.

We long for an affection altogether ignorant of our faults. Heaven has accorded this to us in the uncritical canine attachment.

There is no sense of ease like the ease we felt in those scenes where we were born.

We reap what we sow, but nature has love over and above that justice, and gives us shadow and blossom and fruit, that spring from no planting of ours.

If a man goes a little too far along a new road, it is usually himself that he harms more than any one else.