My books don't seem to belong to me after I have once written them; and I find myself delivering opinions about them as if I had nothing to do with them.

I'm proof against that word failure. I've seen behind it. The only failure a man ought to fear is failure of cleaving to the purpose he sees to be best.

even those who call themselves 'intimate' know very little about each other - hardly ever know just how a sorrow is felt, and hurt each other by their very attempts at sympathy or consolation. We can bear no hand on our bruises.

I'm not one of those that can see the cat in the dairy and wonder what she's there for.

Resolve will melt no rocks. But it can scale them.

No one who has ever known what it is to lose faith in a fellow-man whom he has profoundly loved and reverenced, will lightly say that the shock can leave the faith in the Invisible Goodness unshaken. With the sinking of high human trust, the dignity of life sinks too; we cease to believe in our own better self, since that also is part of the common nature which is degraded in our thought; and all the finer impulses of the soul are dulled.

It is seldom that the miserable can help regarding their misery as a wrong inflicted by those who are less miserable.