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.

Will not a tiny speck very close to our vision blot out the glory of the world, and leave only a margin by which we see the blot? I know no speck so troublesome as self.

Those old stories of visions and dreams guiding men have their truth; we are saved by making the future present to ourselves.

... we all know the wag's definition of a philanthropist: a man whose charity increases directly as the square of the distance.

I have the conviction that excessive literary production is a social offence.

A woman's hopes are woven of sunbeams; a shadow annihilates them.

A human life, I think, should be well rooted in some spot of a native land, where it may get the love of tender kinship for the face of earth, for the labors men go forth to, for the sounds and accents that haunt it, for whatever will give that early home a familiar, unmistakable difference amidst the future widening of knowledge.