The value of old age depends upon the person who reaches it. To some men of early performance it is useless. To others, who are late to develop, it just enables them to finish the job.

War makes good history but peace is poor reading.

It was that period in the vernal quarter when we may suppose the Dryads to be waking for the season. The vegetable world begins to move and swell and the saps to rise, till in the completest silence of lone gardens and trackless plantations, where everything seems helpless and still after the bond and slavery of frost, there are bustlings, strainings, united thrusts, and pulls-all-together, in comparison with which the powerful tugs of cranes and pulleys in a noisy city are but pigmy efforts.

My wicked heart will ramble on in spite of myself. (Arabella)

Let me enjoy the earth no less because the all-enacting light that fashioned forth its loveliness had other aims than my delight.

So each had a private little sun for her soul to bask in; some dream, some affection, some hobby, or at least some remote and distant hope.

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