These fellow-mortals, every one, must be accepted as they are: you can neither straighten their noses, nor brighten their wit, nor rectify their dispositions; and it is these people-amongst whom your life is passed-that it is needful you should tolerate, pity, and love: it is these more or less ugly, stupid, inconsistent people whose movements of goodness you should be able to admire-for whom you should cherish all possible hopes, all possible patience.

I am influenced at the present time by far higher considerations and by a nobler idea of duty than I ever was when I held the Evangelical belief.

A proud heart and a lofty mountain are never fruitful.

There is a mercy which is weakness, and even treason against the common good.

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

'Character," says Novalis, in one of his questionable aphorisms - character is destiny'.

Perfect love has a breath of poetry which can exalt the relations of the least-instructed human beings.