Cathedrals do not seem to me to have been built. They seem, rather, stupendous growths of nature, like crystals, or cliffs of basalt.

It is generally understood that men don't aspire after the absolute right, but only to do about as well as the rest of the world.

My vocation to preach on paper.

To be really great in little things, to be truly noble and heroic in the insipid details of everyday life, is a virtue so rare as to be worthy of canonization.

Of course, in a novel, people's hearts break, and they die and that is the end of it; and in a story this is very convenient. But in real life we do not die when all that makes life bright dies to us.

O, what an untold world there is in one human heart!

People who hate trouble generally get a good deal of it.