Better lose your life than your soul.

The scar will remain, but it is better for a man to lose both arms than his soul; and these hard years, instead of being lost, may be made the most precious of your lives, if they teach you to rule yourselves.

I could have been a great many things.

The clocks were striking midnight and the rooms were very still as a figure glided quietly from bed to bed, smoothing a coverlid here, settling a pillow there, and pausing to look long and tenderly at each unconscious face, to kiss each with lips that mutely blessed, and to pray the fervent prayers which only mothers utter.

[She was] kept there in the sort of embrace a man gives to the dearest creature the world holds for him.

Now and then genius carries all before it, but not often. We have to climb slowly, with many slips and falls.

But many of the bravest never are known, and get no praise. That does not lessen their beauty.