No story is the same to us after a lapse of time; or rather we who read it are no longer the same interpreters.

So deeply inherent is it in this life of ours that men have to suffer for each other's sins, so inevitably diffusive is human suffering, that even justice makes its victims, and we can conceive no retribution that does not spread beyond its mark in pulsations of unmerited pain.

I love words; they are the quoits, the bows, the staves that furnish the gymnasium of the mind.

I could not without vile hypocrisy and a miserable truckling to the smile of the world ... profess to join in worship which I wholly disapprove.

A mother's yearning feels the presence of the cherished child even in the degraded man.

It is a common enough case, that of a man being suddenly captivated by a woman nearly the opposite of his ideal.

... happy husbands and wives can hear each other say the same thing over and over again without being tired.