Mankind is not a circle with a single center but an ellipse with two focal points of which facts are one and ideas the other.

Let us admit, without bitterness, that the individual has his distinct interests and can, without felony, stipulate for those interests and defend them. The present has its pardonable amount of egotism; momentary life has its claims, and cannot be expected to sacrifice itself incessantly to the future. The generation which is in its turn passing over the earth is not forced to abridge its life for the sake of the generations, its equals after all, whose turn shall come later on.

Nothing discernible to the eye of the spirit is more brilliant or obscure than man; nothing is more formidable, complex, mysterious, and infinite. There is a prospect greater than the sea, and it is the sky; there is a prospect greater than the sky, and it is the human soul.

A fall from such a height is rarely straight downwards.

A woman's best qualities are harmful if undiluted with prudence.

There is a material advancement; we desire it. There is, also, a moral grandeur; we hold fast to it.

She worked in order to live, and presently fell in love, also in order to live, for the heart, too, has its hunger.