I desire no future that will break the ties of the past.

In every parting there is an image of death.

The fact is, both callers and work thicken - the former sadly interfering with the latter.

Your dunce who can't do his sums always has a taste for the infinite.

It is a sad weakness in us, after all, that the thought of a person's death consecrates him or her anew to us. It is as if life were not sacred too, as if it were comparatively a small thing to fail in love and reverence to the brother or sister who has to climb the whole toilsome mountain with us. It seems as if all our tears and tenderness were due to the one who is spared that hard journey.

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.

Starting a long way off the true point, and proceeding by loops and zigzags , we now and then arrive just where we ought to be.