I easily sink into mere absorption of what other minds have done, and should like a whole life for that alone.

There's things to put up wi' in ivery place, an' you may change an' change an' not better yourself when all's said an' done.

We are on a perilous margin when we begin to look passively at our future selves, and see our own figures led with dull consent into insipid misdoing and shabby achievement.

The years seem to rush by now, and I think of death as a fast approaching end of a journey-double and treble reason for loving as well as working while it is day.

Every woman is supposed to have the same set of motives, or else to be a monster.

It is a common sentence that Knowledge is power; but who hath duly considered or set forth the power of Ignorance? Knowledge slowly builds up what Ignorance in an hour pulls down. Knowledge, through patient and frugal centuries, enlarges discovery and makes record of it; Ignorance, wanting its day's dinner, lights a fire with the record, and gives a flavour to its one roast with the burnt souls of many generations.

When death, the great reconciler, has come, it is never our tenderness that we repent of, but our severity.