After all, people may really have in them some vocation which is not quite plain to themselves, may they not? They may seem idle and weak because they are growing. We should be very patient with each other, I think.

Is not this a true autumn day? Just the still melancholy that I love - that makes life and nature harmonise. The birds are consulting about their migrations, the trees are putting on the hectic or the pallid hues of decay, and begin to strew the ground, that one's very footsteps may not disturb the repose of earth and air, while they give us a scent that is a perfect anodyne to the restless spirit. Delicious autumn! My very soul is wedded to it, and if I were a bird I would fly about the earth seeking the successive autumns.

The mother's love is at first an absorbing delight, blunting all other sensibilities; it is an expansion of the animal existence.

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

For what is love itself, for the one we love best? An enfolding of immeasurable cares which yet are better than any joys outside our love.

I think I dislike what I don't like more than I like what I like.

Of a truth, Knowledge is power, but it is a power reined by scruple, having a conscience of what must be and what may be. . . .