Duty has a trick of behaving unexpectedly -- something like a heavy friend whom we have amiably asked to visit us, and who breaks his leg within our gates.

Given, a man with moderate intellect, a moral standard not higher than the average, some rhetorical affluence and a great glibness of speech, what is the career in which, without the aid of birth or money, he may most easily attain power and reputation in English society? Where is that Goshen of mediocrity in which a smattering of science and learning will pass for profound instruction, where platitudes will be accepted as wisdom, bigoted narrowness as holy zeal, unctuous egoism as God-given piety?

Nothing is so good as it seems beforehand.

All things journey: sun and moon, Morning, noon, and afternoon, Night and all her stars; 'Twixt the east and western bars Round they journey, Come and go! We go with them!

The perpetual mourner -- the grief that can never be healed -- is innocently enough felt to be wearisome by the rest of the world. And my sense of desolation increases. Each day seems a new beginning -- a new acquaintance with grief.

If the past is not to bind us, where can duty lie? We should have no law but the inclination of the moment.

We are all of us born in moral stupidity, taking the world as an udder to feed our supreme selves