I would rather believe that God did not exist than believe that he was indifferent.

Art belongs to all times and to all countries; its special benefit is precisely to be still living when everything else seems dying; that is why Providence shields it from too personal or too general passions, and grants it a patient and persevering organization, durable sensibility, and the contemplative sense in which lies invincible faith.

It is a mistake to regard age as a downhill grade toward dissolution. The reverse is true. As one grows older, one climbs with surprising strides.

Work is not man's punishment. It is his reward and his strength and his pleasure.

One approaches the journey's end. But the end is a goal, not a catastrophe.

The world will know and understand me someday. But if that day does not arrive, it does not greatly matter. I shall have opened the way for other women.

Faith is an excitement and an enthusiasm: it is a condition of intellectual magnificence to which we must cling as to a treasure, and not squander on our way through life in the small coin of empty words, or in exact and priggish argument.