Her future, she thought, was likely to be worse than her past, for after her years of contented renunciation, she had slipped back into desire and longing; she found joyless days of distasteful occupation harder and harder; she found the image of the intense and varied life she yearned for, and despaired of, becoming more and more importunate.

The law and medicine should be very serious professions to undertake, should they not? People's lives and fortunes depend on them.

When God makes His presence felt through us, we are like the burning bush: Moses never took any heed what sort of bush it was—he only saw the brightness of the Lord.

Death was not to be a leap: it was to be a long descent under thickening shadows.

The first sense of mutual love excludes other feelings; it will have the soul all to itself.

He who rules must fully humor as much as he commands.

All writing seems to me worse in the state of proof than in any other form. In manuscript one's own wisdom is rather remarkable to one, but in proof it has the effect of one's private furniture repeated in the shop windows. And then there is the sense that the worst errors will go to press unnoticed!