Her little butterfly soul fluttered incessantly between memory and dubious expectation.

Her little butterfly soul fluttered incessantly between memory and dubious expectation.

What moments of despair that life would ever be made precious to me by the consciousness that I lived to some good purpose! It was that sort of despair that sucked away the sap of half the hours which might have been filled by energetic youthful activity: and the same demon tries to get hold of me again whenever an old work is dismissed and a new one is being meditated.

Duty has a trick of behaving unexpectedly -- something like a heavy friend whom we have amiably asked to visit us, and who breaks his leg within our gates.

The beginning of compunction is the beginning of a new life.

It is very hard to say the exact truth, even about your own immediate feelings – much harder than to say something fine about them which is not the exact truth.

Many an inherited sorrow that has marred a life has been breathed into no human ear.