We could never have loved the earth so well if we had no childhood in it if it were not the earth where the same flowers come up again every spring that we used to gather with our tiny fingers as we sat lisping to ourselves on the grass . . .

Resolve will melt no rocks. But it can scale them.

Human experience is usually paradoxical.

Jealousy is never satisfied with anything short of an omniscience that would detect the subtlest fold of the heart.

What a wretched lot of old shrivelled creatures we shall be by-and-by. Never mind - the uglier we get in the eyes of others, the lovelier we shall be to each other; that has always been my firm faith about friendship.

Is it not rather what we expect in men, that they should have numerous strands of experience lying side by side and never compare them with each other?

Man cannot choose his duties.