We have no right to come forward and urge wider changes for good, until we have tried to alter the evils which lie under our own hands.

Every year strips us of at least one vain expectation, and teaches us to reckon some solid good in its stead.

I suppose it was that in courtship everything is regarded as provisional and preliminary, and the smallest sample of virtue or accomplishment is taken to guarantee delightful stores which the broad leisure of marriage will reveal. But the door-sill of marriage once crossed, expectation is concentrated on the present. Having once embarked on your marital voyage, it is impossible not to be aware that you make no way and that the sea is not within sight-that, in fact, you are exploring an enclosed basin.

In spite of his practical ability, some of his experience had petrified into maxims and quotations.

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

The first condition of human goodness is something to love; the second, something to reverence.

For pain must enter into its glorified life of memory before it can turn into compassion.