Free will is not the liberty to do whatever one likes, but the power of doing whatever one sees ought to be done, even in the very face of otherwise overwhelming impulse. There lies freedom, indeed.

There is no water in oxygen, no water in hydrogen: it comes bubbling fresh from the imagination of the living God, rushing from under the great white throne of the glacier. The very thought of it makes one gasp with an elemental joy no metaphysician can analyse.

Where did you get your eyes so blue? Out of the sky as I came through.

My spirits rose as I went deeper; into the forest; but I could not regain my former elasticity of mind. I found cheerfulness to be like life itself - not to be created by any argument. Afterwards I learned, that the best way to manage some kinds of pain fill thoughts, is to dare them to do their worst; to let them lie and gnaw at your heart till they are tired; and you find you still have a residue of life they cannot kill. So, better and worse, I went on, till I came to a little clearing in the forest.

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.

The ideal is the only absolute real; and it must become the real in the individual life as well, however impossible they may count it who never tried it.

I write, not for children,but for the child-like, whether they be of five, or fifty, or seventy-five.