I trust you as holy men trust God; you could do nought that was not pure and loving, though the deed might pierce me unto death.

But what is opportunity to the man who can't use it?

You may try — but you can never imagine what it is to have a man's force of genius in you, and yet to suffer the slavery of being a girl.

There is hardly any contact more depressing to a young ardent creature than that of a mind in which years full of knowledge seem to have issued in a blank absence of interest or sympathy.

It is a sad weakness in us, after all, that the thought of a person's death consecrates him or her anew to us. It is as if life were not sacred too, as if it were comparatively a small thing to fail in love and reverence to the brother or sister who has to climb the whole toilsome mountain with us. It seems as if all our tears and tenderness were due to the one who is spared that hard journey.

Death was not to be a leap: it was to be a long descent under thickening shadows.

What do we live for, if not to make life less difficult for each other?