It is a wonderful subduer, this need of love-this hunger of the heart-as peremptory as that other hunger by which Nature forces us to submit to the yoke, and change the face of the world.

Our thoughts are often worse than we are.

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.

It had already occurred to him that books were stuff, and that life was stupid.

We have all our secret sins; and if we knew ourselves we should not judge each other harshly.

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

Mighty is the force of motherhood! It transforms all things by its vital heat; it turns timidity into fierce courage, and dreadless defiance into tremulous submission; it turns thoughtlessness into foresight, and yet stills all anxiety into calm content; it makes selfishness become self-denial, and gives even to hard vanity the glance of admiring love.