It is painful to be told that anything is very fine and not be able to feel that it is fine--something like being blind, while people talk of the sky.

Where women love each other, men learn to smother their mutual dislike.

It is an uneasy lot at best, to be what we call highly taught and yet not to enjoy: to be present at this great spectacle of life and never to be liberated from a small hungry shivering self.

Our sense of duty must often wait for some work which shall take the place of dilettanteism [sic] and make us feel that the quality of our action is not a matter of indifference.

To most mortals there is a stupidity which is unendurable and a stupidity which is altogether acceptable - else, indeed, what would become of social bonds?

Steady work turns genius to a loom.

The thing we look forward to often comes to pass, but never precisely in the way we have imagined to ourselves.