A sneer is like a flame; it may occasionally be curative because it cauterizes, but it leaves a bitter scar.

the attempt to break a habit of years is necessarily experimental.

a great moment raises most of the people who experience it, to its own level; and that is why they do not always recognize its greatness - or their own.

gossip, after it reaches a certain point of insult and falsehood, becomes a source of amusement to its victims.

the blue and cloudless day closes like the lid of a casket of jewels upon the violet rim of sea, and shuts out the light.

moral vanity is the snare of good people.

By some mysterious method, Susan Carr's gossip gave the listener a gentler feeling towards his kind. When she spoke of her neighbors' faults, one knew that somehow they were simply virtues gone to seed.