The sweetest of all success is that which one wins by hard exertion.

Perfect love has a breath of poetry which can exalt the relations of the least-instructed human beings.

Steady work turns genius to a loom.

I'll tell you what's the greatest power under heaven, and that is public opinion-the ruling belief in society about what is right and what is wrong, what is honourable and what is shameful. That's the steam that is to work the engines.

... it is one of the gains of advancing age that the good of young creatures becomes a more definite intense joy to us. With that renunciation for ourselves which age inevitably brings, we get more freedom of soul to enter into the life of others; what we can never learn they will know, and the gladness which is a departed sunlight to us is rising with the strength of morning to them.

The greatest benefit we owe to the artist, whether painter, poet, or novelist, is the extension of our sympathies.

It was one of those dangerous moments when speech is at once sincere and deceptive - when feeling, rising high above its average depth, leaves flood-marks which are never reached again.