It is in these acts called trivialities that the seeds of joy are forever wasted, until men and women look round with haggard faces at the devastation their own waste has made, and say, the earth bears no harvest of sweetness - calling their denial knowledge.

When a homemaking aunt scolds a niece for following her evangelistic passion instead of domestic pursuits, her reply is interesting. First, she clarifies that God's individual call on her doesn't condemn those in more conventional roles. Then, she says she can no more ignore the cry of the lost than her aunt can the cry of her child.

Plain women he regarded as he did the other severe facts of life, to be faced with philosophy and investigated by science.

... it is because sympathy is but a living again through our own past in a new form, that confession often prompts a response of confession.

We judge other according to results; how else?--not knowing the process by which results are arrived at.

If you had a table spread for a feast, and was making merry with your friends, you would think it was kind to let me come and sit down and rejoice with you, because you'd think I should to share those good things; but I should better to share in your trouble and your labour.

The troublesome ones in a family are usually either the wits or the idiots.