There is no despair so absolute as that which comes with the first moments of our first great sorrow, when we have not yet known what it is to have suffered and be healed, to have despaired and have recovered hope.

All meanings, we know, depend on the key of interpretation.

There are natures in which, if they love us, we are conscious of having a sort of baptism and consecration.

I think I should have no other mortal wants, if I could always have plenty of music.

It is, I fear, but a vain show of fulfilling the heathen precept, ''Know thyself,'' and too often leads to a self- estimate which will subsist in the absence of that fruit by which alone the quality of the tree is made evident.

Our impartiality is kept for abstract merit and demerit, which none of us ever saw.

There's things to put up wi' in ivery place, an' you may change an' change an' not better yourself when all's said an' done.