Certainly the determining acts of her life were not ideally beautiful. They were the mixed result of young and novel impulse struggling amidst the conditions of an imperfect social state, in which great feelings will often take the aspect of error, and great faith the aspect of illusion.

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

She was no longer struggling against the perception of facts, but adjusting herself to their clearest perception.

All honour and reverence to the divine beauty of form! Let us cultivate it to the utmost in men, women and children -- in our gardens and in our houses. But let us love that other beauty too, which lies in no secret of proportion but in the secret of deep human sympathy.

In travelling I shape myself betimes to idleness And take fools' pleasure

Among all the many kinds of first love, that which begins in childish companionship is the strongest and most enduring: when passion comes to unite its force to long affection, love is at its spring-tide.

It so often happens that others are measuring us by our past self while we are looking back on that self with a mixture of disgust and sorrow.