The golden moments in the stream of life rush past us, and we see nothing but sand; the angels come to visit us, and we only know them when they are gone.

Education was almost entirely a matter of luck — usually of ill-luck — in those distant days.

... learning to love any one is like an increase of property, -- it increases care, and brings many new fears lest precious things should come to harm.

For what we call illusions are often, in truth, a wider vision of past and present realities - a willing movement of a man's soul with the larger sweep of the world's forces - a movement towards a more assured end than the chances of a single life.

With memory set smarting like a reopened wound, a man's past is not simply a dead history, an outworn preparation of the present: it is not a repented error shaken loose from the life: it is a still quivering part of himself, bringing shudders and bitter flavors and the tinglings of a merited shame.

I've always felt that your belongings have never been on a level with you.

... when one's outward lot is perfect, the sense of inward imperfection is the more pressing.