She was of the stuff of which great men's mothers are made. She was indispensable to high generation, hated at tea parties, feared in shops, and loved at crises.

The offhand decision of some commonplace mind high in office at a critical moment influences the course of events for a hundred years.

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

I may do some good before I am dead--be a sort of success as a frightful example of what not to do; and so illustrate a moral story.

Sometimes I shrink from your knowing what I have felt for you, and sometimes I am distressed that all of it you will never know.

We learn that it is not the rays which bodies absorb, but those which they reject, that give them the colours they are known by; and in the same way people are specialized by their dislikes and antagonisms, whilst their goodwill is looked upon as no attribute at all.

The smile on your mouth was the deadest thing alive enough to have strength to die. (from "Neutral Tones")