George's son had done his work so thoroughly that he was considered too good a workman to live, and was, in fact, taken and tragically shot at twelve o'clock that same day—another instance of the untoward fate which so often attends dogs and other philosophers who follow out a train of reasoning to its logical conclusion, and attempt perfectly consistent conduct in a world made up so largely of compromise.

The main object of religion is not to get a man into heaven, but to get heaven into him.

It was the touch of the imperfect upon the would-be perfect that gave the sweetness, because it was that which gave the humanity

There are disappointments which wring us, and there are those which inflict a wound whose mark we bear to our graves. Such are so keen that no future gratification of the same desire can ever obliterate them: they become registered as a permanent loss of happiness.

If the story-tellers could ha' got decency and good morals from true stories, who'd have troubled to invent parables?

The sudden disappointment of a hope leaves a scar which the ultimate fulfillment of that hope never entirely removes.

Beauty lay not in the thing, but in what the thing symbolized.