People must not choose their neighbors; they must take the neighbors that God sends them. The neighbor is just the person who is next to you at the moment, the person with whom any business has brought you into contact.

As you grow ready for it, somewhere or other you will find what is needful for you in a book.

One of the good things that come of a true marriage is, that there is one face on which changes come without your seeing them; or rather there is one face which you can still see the same, through all the shadows which years have gathered upon it.

It may be infinitely worse to refuse to forgive than to murder, because

In the midst of death we are in life. Life is the only reality; what men call death is but a shadow.

The truly wise talk little about religion and are not given to taking sides on doctrinal issues. When they hear people advocating or opposing the claims of this or that party in the church, they turn away with a smile such as men yield to the talk of children. They have no time, they would say, for that kind of thing. They have enough to do in trying to faithfully practice what is beyond dispute.

What distressed me most - more even than my own folly - was the perplexing question, How can beauty and ugliness dwell so near?