I look upon life as a gift from God. I did nothing to earn it. Now that the time is coming to give it back, I have no right to complain.

Throughout the play everything possible was done to show the virtue, innocence and helplessness of the poor, and the abandoned cruelty, the heartless self-indulgence of the rich.

The will is never free - it is always attached to an object, a purpose. It is simply the engine in the car - it can't steer

Where can one find a profounder desolation than in the poor child who has lost its mother?

The fear of hell, the punishment of sin, how the modern parent revolts from such teaching. Yet I will assert that far from doing us children harm, it was a sure foundation to the world of our confidence, a master girder in our palace of delight.

Old men when they begin to hear the last trumpet, on the morning breeze, often have a kind of absent-minded smile; like people listening. And their smiles are just politeness.

Nothing like poetry when you lie awake at night. It keeps the old brain limber. It washes away the mud and sand that keeps on blocking up the bends. Like waves to make the pebbles dance on my old floors. And turn them into rubies and jacinths; or at any rate, good imitations.