Teach love, for that is what you are.

Can any man or woman choose duties? No more than they can choose their birthplace or their father and mother.

Play not with paradoxes. That caustic which you handle in order to scorch others may happen to sear your own fingers and make them dead to the quality of things.

But, bless us, things may be lovable that are not altogether handsome, I hope?

There is no sorrow I have thought more about than that-to love what is great, and try to reach it, and yet to fail.

Worldly faces never look so worldly as at a funeral. They have the same effect of grating incongruity as the sound of a coarse voice breaking the solemn silence of night.

The best happiness will be to escape the worst misery.