but very little achievement is required in order to pity another man's shortcomings.

People who live at a distance are naturally less faulty than those immediately under our own eyes.

The intensest form of hatred is that rooted in fear.

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.

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.

When I married Humphrey I made up my mind to like sermons, and I set out by liking the end very much. That soon spread to the middle and the beginning, because I couldn't have the end without them.

We all remember epochs in our experience when some dear expectation dies, or some new motive is born.