Starting a long way off the true point, and proceeding by loops and zigzags , we now and then arrive just where we ought to be.

... 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.

Truth has rough flavours if we bite it through.

When I married Humphrey I made up my mind to like sermons, and I set out by liking the end very much. That soon spread to the middle and the beginning, because I couldn't have the end without them.

With memory set smarting like a reopened wound, a man's past is not simply a dead history, an outworn preparation of the present: it is not a repented error shaken loose from the life: it is a still quivering part of himself, bringing shudders and bitter flavors and the tinglings of a merited shame.

... goodness is of a modest nature, easily discouraged, and when much elbowed in early life by unabashed vices, is apt to retire into extreme privacy, so that it is more easily believed in by those who construct a selfish old gentleman theoretically, than by those who form the narrower judgments based on his personal acquaintance.

The pride of the body is a barrier against the gifts that purify the soul.