the curse of human nature is imagination. When a long anticipated moment comes, we always find it pitched a note too low, for the wings of imagination are crushed into its withering sides under the crowding hordes of petty realities.

Plot and melodrama were in every life; in some so briefly as hardly to be recognized, in others-in that of certain men and women in the public eye, for instance-they were almost in the nature of a continuous performance.

fiction is not only the historian of life but its apologist.

genius must ever be imperfect. Life is not long enough nor slow enough for both brain and character to grow side by side to superhuman proportions.

It took me years to learn that character is fate and that no one can be made over.

Nursing is not only a natural vocation for a woman, but an occupation which increases her matrimonial chances about eighty per cent.

nothing in life is more corroding than habit.