Imperfection is in some sort essential to all that we know in life.

Will you not covet such power as this, and seek such throne as this, and be no more housewives, but queens? There is no putting by that crown; queens you must always be; queens to your lovers; queens to your husbands and sons; queens of higher mystery to the world beyond. . . . But alas! you are too often idle and careless queens, grasping at majesty in the least things, while you abdicate it in the greatest.

Like other beautiful things in this world, its end (that of a shaft) is to be beautiful; and, in proportion to its beauty, it receives permission to be otherwise useless. We do not blame emeralds and rubies because we cannot make them into heads of hammers.

What is poetry? The suggestion, by the imagination, of noble grounds for the noble emotions.

It does not matter what the whip is; it is none the less a whip, because you have cut thongs for it out of your own souls.

Kind hearts are the garden, kind thoughts are the roots, kind words are the blossoms, kind deeds are the fruit.

The only way to understand these difficult parts of the Bible, or even to approach them with safety, is first to read and obey the easy ones.