To the receptive soul the river of life pauseth not, nor is diminished.

Gossip is a sort of smoke that comes from the dirty tobacco-pipes of those who diffuse it: it proves nothing but the bad taste of the smoker.

For my part I am very sorry for him. It is an uneasy lot at best, to be what we call highly taught and yet not to enjoy: to be present at this great spectacle of life and never to be liberated from a small hungry shivering self--never to be fully possessed by the glory we behold, never to have our consciousness rapturously transformed into the vividness of a thought, the ardour of a passion, the energy of an action, but always to be scholarly and uninspired, ambitious and timid, scrupulous and dimsighted.

Friendship is the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person, having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words.

I could not without vile hypocrisy and a miserable truckling to the smile of the world ... profess to join in worship which I wholly disapprove.

There's good chances and bad chances, and nobody's luck is pulled only by one string.

For character too is a process and an unfoldingamong our valued friends is there not someone or other who is a little too self confident and disdainful; whose distinguished mind is a little spotted with commonness; who is a little pinched here and protruberent there with native prejudices; or whose better energies are liable to lapse down the wrong channel under the influence of transient solicitations?