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

In spite of his practical ability, some of his experience had petrified into maxims and quotations.

I'm proof against that word failure. I've seen behind it. The only failure a man ought to fear is failure of cleaving to the purpose he sees to be best.

A woman's hopes are woven of sunbeams; a shadow annihilates them.

It is a common sentence that knowledge is power; but who hath duly considered or set forth the power of ignorance? Knowledge slowly builds up what ignorance in an hour pulls down.

It is the way with half the truth amidst which we live, that it only haunts us and makes dull pulsations that are never born into sound.

Some people are born to make life pretty, and others to grumble that it is not pretty enough.