'Tis God gives skill, but not without men's hand: He could not make Antonio Stradivarius's violins without Antonio.

The mother's love is at first an absorbing delight, blunting all other sensibilities; it is an expansion of the animal existence.

Strange, that some of us, with quick alternate vision, see beyond our infatuations, and even while we rave on the heights, behold the wide plain where our persistent self pauses and awaits us.

Love has a way of cheating itself consciously, like a child who plays at solitary hide-and-seek; it is pleased with assurances that it all the while disbelieves.

Great feelings will often take the aspect of error, and great faith the aspect of illusion.

As to memory, it is known that this frail faculty naturally lets drop the facts which are less flattering to our self-love - when it does not retain them carefully as subjects not to be approached, marshy spots with a warning flag over them.

Half the sorrows of women would be averted if they could repress the speech they know to be useless-nay, the speech they have resolved not to utter.