Love at its highest flood rushes beyond its object, and loses itself in the sense of divine mystery.

Family likeness has often a deep sadness in it. Nature, that great tragic dramatist, knits us together by bone and muscle, and divides us by the subtler web of our brains; blends yearning and repulsion; and ties us by our heart-strings to the beings that jar us at every movement.

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.

A human being in this aged nation of ours is a very wonderful hole, the slow creation of long interchanging influences; and charm is a result of two such wholes, the one loving and the one loved.

It’s rather a strong check to one’s self-complacency to find how much of one’s right doing depends on not being in want of money.

... the true seeing is within; and painting stares at you with an insistent imperfection.

Marriage must be a relation either of sympathy or of conquest.