... the business of life shuts us up within the environs of London and within sight of human advancement, which I should be so very glad to believe in without seeing.

The wrong that rouses our angry passions finds only a medium in us; it passes through us like a vibration, and we inflict what we have suffered.

It is the way with half the truth amidst which we live, that it only haunts us and makes dull pulsations that are never born into sound.

Trouble comes to us all in this life: we set our hearts on things which it isn't God's will for us to have, and then we go sorrowing.

Better a false belief than no belief at all.

... indefinite visions of ambition are weak against the ease of doing what is habitual or beguilingly agreeable.

All writing seems to me worse in the state of proof than in any other form. In manuscript one's own wisdom is rather remarkable to one, but in proof it has the effect of one's private furniture repeated in the shop windows. And then there is the sense that the worst errors will go to press unnoticed!