Can any man or woman choose duties? No more than they can choose their birthplace or their father and mother.

If I could only fancy myself clever, it would be better, but to be a failure of Nature and to know it is not a comfortable lot. It is the last lesson one learns, to be contented with one's inferiority -- but it must be learned.

If youth is the season of hope, it is often so only in the sense that our elders are hopeful about us; for no age is so apt as youth to think its emotions, partings, and resolves are the last of their kind. Each crisis seems final, simply because it is new. We are told that the oldest inhabitants in Peru do not cease to be agitated by the earthquakes, but they probably see beyond each shock, and reflect that there are plenty more to come.

I easily sink into mere absorption of what other minds have done, and should like a whole life for that alone.

There is no killing the suspicion that deceit has once begotten.

... learning to love any one is like an increase of property, -- it increases care, and brings many new fears lest precious things should come to harm.

Poetry and art and knowledge are sacred and pure.