Our dead are never dead to us until we have forgotten them: they can be injured by us, they can be wounded; they know all our penitence, all our aching sense that their place is empty, all the kisses we bestow on the smallest relic of their presence.

[It is easier] to quell emotion than to incur the consequences of venting it.

How is it that the poets have said so many fine things about our first love, so few about our later love? Are their first poems their best? or are not those the best which come from their fuller thought, their larger experience, their deeper-rooted affections? The boy's flute-like voice has its own spring charm; but the man should yield a richer, deeper music.

Life is like our game at whist ... I don't enjoy the game much, but I like to play my cards well, and see what will be the end of it.

Her heart went out to him with a stronger movement than ever, at the thought that people would blame him. Maggie hated blame; she had been blamed her whole life, and nothing had come of it but evil tempers.

... the fallibility of human brains is in nothing more obvious than in proof reading.

The yoke a man creates for himself by wrong-doing will breed hate in the kindliest nature.