A man vows, and yet will not east away the means of breaking his vow. Is it that he distinctly means to break it? Not at all; but the desires which tend to break it are at work in him dimly, and make their way into his imagination, and relax his muscles in the very moments when he is telling himself over again the reasons for his vow.

... happy husbands and wives can hear each other say the same thing over and over again without being tired.

I can't bear fishing. I think people look like fools sitting watching a line hour after hour-or else throwing and throwing, and catching nothing.

How should all the apparatus of heaven and earth make poetry for a mind that had no movements of awe and tenderness, no sense of fellowship which thrills from the near to the distant, and back again from the distant to the near?

Can any man or woman choose duties? No more than they can choose their birthplace or their father and mother.

We are all of us born in moral stupidity, taking the world as an udder to feed our supreme selves

Memory, when duly impregnated with ascertained facts, is sometimes surprisingly fertile.