And, of course men know best about everything, except what women know better.

Education was almost entirely a matter of luck — usually of ill-luck — in those distant days.

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.

To judge wisely, we must know how things appear to the unwise.

If youth is the season of hope, it is often so only in the sense that our elders are hopeful about us; for no age is so apt as youth to think its emotions, partings, and resolves are the last of their kind. Each crisis seems final, simply because it is new. We are told that the oldest inhabitants in Peru do not cease to be agitated by the earthquakes, but they probably see beyond each shock, and reflect that there are plenty more to come.

The yoke a man creates for himself by wrong-doing will breed hate in the kindliest nature.

Harold, like the rest of us, had many impressions which saved him the trouble of distinct ideas.