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

Best friend, my well-spring in the wilderness!

There is a sort of subjection which is the peculiar heritage of largeness and of love; and strength is often only another name for willing bondage to irremediable weakness.

Fear was stronger than the calculation of probabilities.

But with regard to critical occasions, it often happens that all moments seem comfortably remote until the last.

Imagination is a licensed trespasser: it has no fear of dogs, but may climb over walls and peep in at windows with impunity.

There is no short-cut no patent tram-road, to wisdom. After all the centuries of invention, the soul's path lies through the thorny wilderness which must still be trodden in solitude, with bleeding feet, with sobs for help, as it was trodden by them of old time.