When we get to wishing a great deal for ourselves, whatever we get soon turns into mere limitation and exclusion.

Is it not rather what we expect in men, that they should have numerous strands of experience lying side by side and never compare them with each other?

Human feeling is like the mighty rivers that bless the earth: it does not wait for beauty — it flows with resistless force and brings beauty with it.

We reap what we sow, but nature has love over and above that justice, and gives us shadow and blossom and fruit, that spring from no planting of ours.

and we must learn to accommodate ourselves to the discovery that some of those cunningly-fashioned instruments called human souls have only a very limited range of music, and will not vibrate in the least under a touch that fills others with tremulous rapture or quivering agony.

This is a puzzling world, and Old Harry's got a finger in it.

In poor Rosamond's mind there was not room enough for luxuries to look small in.