What is opportunity to the man who cant use it?

What moments of despair that life would ever be made precious to me by the consciousness that I lived to some good purpose! It was that sort of despair that sucked away the sap of half the hours which might have been filled by energetic youthful activity: and the same demon tries to get hold of me again whenever an old work is dismissed and a new one is being meditated.

It's but little good you'll do a-watering the last year's crops

When what is good comes of age, and is likely to live, there is reason for rejoicing.

Marriage is so unlike everything else. There is something even awful in the nearness it brings. Even if we loved someone else better than - than those we were married to, it would be no use. I mean, marriage drinks up all our power of giving or getting any blessedness in that sort of love. I know it may be very dear, but it murders our marriage, and then the marriage stays with us like a murder, and everything else is gone.

A fine lady is a squirrel-headed thing, with small airs and small notions; about as applicable to the business of life as a pair of tweezers to the clearing of a forest.

An ass may bray a good while before he shakes the stars down.