It is one thing to see your road, another to cut it.

... as usual I am suffering much from doubt as to the worth of what I am doing and fear lest I may not be able to complete it so as to make it a contribution to literature and not a mere addition to the heap of books.

It is seldom that the miserable can help regarding their misery as a wrong inflicted by those who are less miserable.

It is always good to know, if only in passing, charming human beings. It refreshes one like flowers and woods and clear brooks.

Certainly the determining acts of her life were not ideally beautiful. They were the mixed result of young and novel impulse struggling amidst the conditions of an imperfect social state, in which great feelings will often take the aspect of error, and great faith the aspect of illusion.

'Character," says Novalis, in one of his questionable aphorisms - character is destiny'.

I am not resigned: I am not sure life is long enough to learn that lesson.