What do we live for, if not to make life less difficult for each other?

There is no sort of wrong deed of which a man can bear the punishment alone; you can't isolate yourself and say that the evil that is in you shall not spread. Men's lives are as thoroughly blended with each other as the air they breathe; evil spreads as necessarily as disease.

Impatient people, according to Bacon, are like the bees, and kill themselves in stinging others.

A friend is one to whom one may pour out the contents of one's heart, chaff and grain together, knowing that gentle hands will take and sift it, keep what is worth keeping, and with a breath of kindness, blow the rest away.

even those who call themselves 'intimate' know very little about each other - hardly ever know just how a sorrow is felt, and hurt each other by their very attempts at sympathy or consolation. We can bear no hand on our bruises.

In poor Rosamond's mind there was not room enough for luxuries to look small in.

A mother's yearning feels the presence of the cherished child even in the degraded man.