She wanted—what some people want throughout life—a grief that should deeply touch her, and thus humanize and make her capable of sympathy.

Most people are so constituted that they can only be virtuous in a certain routine; an irregular course of life demoralizes them.

A vast deal of human sympathy runs along the electric line of needlework, stretching from the throne to the wicker chair of the humble seamstress.

Eager souls, mystics and revolutionaries, may propose to refashion the world in accordance with their dreams; but evil remains, and so long as it lurks in the secret places of the heart, utopia is only the shadow of a dream

Love, whether newly born, or aroused from a deathlike slumber, must always create sunshine, filling the heart so full of radiance, this it overflows upon the outward world.

Shall we never never get rid of this Past? ... It lies upon the Present like a giant's dead body.

A man's bewilderment is the measure of his wisdom.