We judge other according to results; how else?--not knowing the process by which results are arrived at.

Men outlive their love, but they don’t outlive the consequences of their recklessness.

... indefinite visions of ambition are weak against the ease of doing what is habitual or beguilingly agreeable.

Man cannot choose his duties.

How will you find good? It is not a thing of choice; it is a river that flows from the foot of the Invisible Throne and flows by the path of obedience.

Some gentlemen have made an amazing figure in literature by general discontent with the universe as a trap of dulness into which their great souls have fallen by mistake; but the sense of a stupendous self and an insignificant world may have its consolations. Lydgate's discontent was much harder to bear; it was the sense that there was a grand existence in thought and effective action lying around him, while his self was being narrowed into the miserable isolation of egoistic fears, and vulgar anxieties for events that might allay such fears.

Kisses honeyed by oblivion.