Faith and love are apt to be spasmodic in the best minds: Men live on the brink of mysteries and harmonies into which yet they never enter, and with their hand on the doorlatch they die outside.

Children are all foreigners.

It behooves us to be careful what we worship, for what we are worshipping we are becoming.

We do what we must, and call it by the best names we can, and would fain have the praise of having intended the result which ensues.

Exaggeration is in the course of things. Nature sends no creature, no man into the world, without adding a small excess of his proper quality. Given the planet, it is still necessary to add the impulse; so, to every creature nature added a little violence of direction in its proper path, a shove to put it on its way; in every instance, a slight generosity, a drop too much.

A man is not to aim at innocence, any more than he is to aim at hair, but he is to keep it.

A strenuous soul hates cheap success.