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.

Falsehood is so easy, truth so difficult. Even with no motive to be false, it is very hard to say the exact truth.

What loneliness is more lonely than distrust?

There are men whose presence infuses trust and reverence.

I will to make life less bitter for a few within my reach.

Men outlive their love, but they don’t outlive the consequences of their recklessness.

What quarrel, what harshness, what unbelief in each other can subsist in the presence of a great calamity, when all the artificial vesture of our life is gone, and we are all one with each other in primitive mortal needs?