It is, I fear, but a vain show of fulfilling the heathen precept, ''Know thyself,'' and too often leads to a self- estimate which will subsist in the absence of that fruit by which alone the quality of the tree is made evident.

That by desiring what is perfectly good, even when we don't quite know what it is and cannot do what we would, we are part of the divine power against evil -- widening the skirts of light and making the struggle with darkness narrower.

You have such strong words at command, that they make the smallest argument seem formidable.

What people do who go into politics I can't think; it drives me almost mad to see mismanagement over only a few hundred acres.

What a wretched lot of old shrivelled creatures we shall be by-and-by. Never mind - the uglier we get in the eyes of others, the lovelier we shall be to each other; that has always been my firm faith about friendship.

We are led on, like little children, by a way we know not.

Plain women he regarded as he did the other severe facts of life, to be faced with philosophy and investigated by science.