Nature is full of freaks, and now puts an old head on young shoulders, and then takes a young heart heating under fourscore winters.

The growth of the intellect is spontaneous in every expansion. The mind that grows could not predict the times, the means, the mode of that spontaneity. God enters by a private door into every individual.

Whom God has put asunder, why should man put together?

The whole of what we know is a system of compensation. Every defect in one manner is made up in another. Every suffering is rewarded; every sacrifice is made up; every debt is paid.

A great part of courage is the courage of having done the thing before.

Man begins life helpless. The babe is in paroxysms of fear the moment its nurse leaves it alone, and it comes so slowly to any power of self-protection that mothers say the salvation of the life and health of a young child is a perpetual miracle.

What we love that we have, but by desire we bereave ourselves of the love.