It is strange how deeply colours seem to penetrate one, like scent.
The mind that is too ready at contempt and reprobation is, I may say, as a clenched fist that can give blows, but is shut up from receiving and holding ought that is precious.
Human longings are perversely obstinate; and to the man whose mouth is watering for a peach, it is of no use to offer the largest vegetable marrow.
To men who only aim at escaping felony, nothing short of the prisoner’s dock is disgrace.
Obligation may be stretched till it is no better than a brand of slavery stamped on us when we were too young to know its meaning.
No matter whether failure came A thousand different times, For one brief moment of success, Life rang its golden chimes.
Whatever be thy fate today, Remember, this will pass away!
Our life is determined for us – and it makes the mind very free when we give up wishing, and only think of bearing what is laid upon us, and doing what is given us to do.
Those who have been indulged by fortune and have always thought of calamity as what happens to others, feel a blind incredulous rage at the reversal of their lot, and half believe that their wild cries will alter the course of the storm.
They say fortune is a woman and capricious. But sometimes she is a good woman, and gives to those who merit.
When gratitude has become a matter of reasoning there are many ways of escaping from its bonds.
I’d sooner have one real grief on my mind than twenty false. It’s better to know one’s robbed than to think one’s going to be murdered.
The worst of all hobbies are those that people think they can get money at. They shoot their money down like corn out of a sack then.
The purifying influence of public confession springs from the fact, that by it the hope in lies is forever swept away, and the soul recovers the noble attitude of simplicity.
The saints were cowards who stood by to see Christ crucified: they should have flung themselves Upon the Roman spears, and died in vain – The grandest death, to die in vain – for love Greater than sways the forces of the world!
You must learn to deal with the odd and even in life, as well as in figures.
So our lives glide on: the river ends we don’t know where, and the sea begins, and then there is no more jumping ashore.
Life was never anything but a perpetual see-saw between gravity and jest.
In all failures, the beginning is certainly the half of the whole.
It must be sad to outlive aught we love.