When a workman knows the use of his tools, he can make a door as well as a window.

Our dead are never dead to us until we have forgotten them: they can be injured by us, they can be wounded; they know all our penitence, all our aching sense that their place is empty, all the kisses we bestow on the smallest relic of their presence.

We are apt to think it the finest era of the world when America was beginning to be discovered, when a bold sailor, even if he were wrecked, might alight on a new kingdom.

There is much pain that is quite noiseless; and vibrations that make human agonies are often a mere whisper in the roar of hurrying existence.

I care only to know, if possible, the lasting meaning that lies in all religious doctrine from the beginning till now.

It is as useless to fight against the interpretations of ignorance as to whip the fog.

I have the conviction that excessive literary production is a social offence.