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.

Plainness has its peculiar temptations and vices quite as much as beauty.

A perverted moral judgment belongs to the dogmatic system.

The best augury of a man's success in his profession is that he thinks it the finest in the world.

The egoism which enters into our theories does not affect their sincerity; rather, the more our egoism is satisfied, the more robust is our belief.

Each thought is a nail that is driven In structures that cannot decay; And the mansion at last will be given To us as we build it each day.

She thought it was part of the hardship of her life that there was laid upon her the burthen of larger wants than others seemed to feel – that she had to endure this wide hopeless yearning for that something, whatever it was, that was greatest and best on this earth.