The mother's love is at first an absorbing delight, blunting all other sensibilities; it is an expansion of the animal existence.

Every year strips us of at least one vain expectation, and teaches us to reckon some solid good in its stead.

A woman's hopes are woven of sunbeams; a shadow annihilates them.

Melodies die out, like the pipe of Pan, with the ears that love them and listen for them.

You must mind and not lower the Church in people's eyes by seeming to be frightened about it for such a little thing.

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

He was one of those men, and they are not the commonest, of whom we can know the best only by following them away from the marketplace, the platform, and the pulpit, entering with them into their own homes, hearing the voice with which they speak to the young and aged about their own hearthstone, and witnessing their thoughtful care for the everyday wants of everyday companions, who take all their kindness as a matter of course, and not as a subject for panegyric.