It is when people do wrong things wilfully that they are the more likely to do them again.

To try too hard to make people good is one way to make them worse. The only way to make them good is to be good, remembering well the beam and the mote.

And her life will perhaps be the richer, for holding now within it the memory of what came, but could not stay.

Could you not give me some sign, or tell me something about you that never changes, or some other way to know you, or thing to know you by?" — "No, Curdie: that would be to keep you from knowing me. You must know me in quite another way from that. It would not be the least use to you or me either if I were to make you know me in that way. It would be but to know the sign of me — not to know me myself.

Were I asked, what is a fairytale? I should reply, Read Undine: that is a fairytale.

The world...is full of resurrections... Every night that folds us up in darkness is a death; and those of you that have been out early, and have seen the first of the dawn, will know it - the day rises out of the night like a being that has burst its tomb and escaped into life.

To be humbly ashamed is to be plunged in the cleansing bath of truth.