Fancy what a game of chess would be if all the chessmen had passions and intellects, more or less small and cunning; if you were not only uncertain about your adversary's men, but a little uncertain also about your own. You would be especially likely to be beaten, if you depended arrogantly on your mathematical imagination, and regarded your passionate pieces with contempt. Yet this imaginary chess is easy compared with a game a man has to play against his fellow-men with other fellow-men for instruments.

There is no despair so absolute as that which comes with the first moments of our first great sorrow, when we have not yet known what it is to have suffered and be healed, to have despaired and have recovered hope.

That golden sky, which was the doubly blessed symbol of advancing day and of approaching rest.

Wine and the sun will make vinegar without any shouting to help them.

The important work of moving the world forward does not wait to be done by perfect men.

We must find our duties in what comes to us, not in what might have been.

Sympathetic people often don't communicate well, they back reflected images which hide their own depths.