Many an inherited sorrow that has marred a life has been breathed into no human ear.

What is opportunity to the man who can't use it? An unfecundated egg, which the waves of time wash away into nonentity.

Surely it is not true blessedness to be free of sorrow while there is sorrow and sin in the world. Sorrow is a part of love and love does not seek to throw it off.

And Dorothea..she had no dreams of being praised above other women. Feeling that there was always something better which she might have done if she had only been better and known better, her full nature spent itself in deeds which left no great name on the earth, but the effect of her being on those around her was incalculable. For the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts and on all those Dorotheas who life faithfully their hidden lives and rest in unvisited tombs. Middlemarch

To have in general but little feeling, seems to be the only security against feeling too much on any particular occasion.

I'm not one of those that can see the cat in the dairy and wonder what she's there for.

But what we strive to gratify, though we may call it a distant hope, is an immediate desire; the future estate for which men drudge up city alleys exists already in their imagination and love.