"Heaven help us," said the old religion; the new one, from its very lack of that faith, will teach us all the more to help one another.

I think cheerfulness is a fortune in itself.

In the days when the spinning wheels hummed busily in the farmhouses--and even great ladies, clothed in silk and thread lace, had their toy spinning wheels of polished oak--there might be seen, in districts far away among the lanes, or deep in the bosom of the hills, certain palled undersized men who, by the side of the brawny country-folk, looked like the remnants of a disinherited race.

There are some cases in which the sense of injury breeds not the will to inflict injuries and climb over them as a ladder, but a hatred of all injury.

the mysterious complexity of our life is not to be embraced by maxims ... to lace ourselves up in formulas of that sort is to repress all the divine promptings and inspirations that spring from growing insight and sympathy.

We have all got to exert ourselves a little to keep sane, and call things by the same names as other people call them by.

autobiography at least saves a man or woman that the world is curious about from the publication of a string of mistakes called 'Memoirs.