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.
It must be sad to outlive aught we love.
Strong souls Live like fire-hearted suns to spend their strength In farthest striving action; breathe more free In mighty anguish than in trivial ease.
Surely, surely the only one true knowledge of our fellow man is that which enables us to feel with him – which gives us a fine ear for the heart-pulses that are beating under the mere clothes of circumstance and opinion.
Thought Has joys apart, even in blackest woe, And seizing some fine thread of verity Knows momentary godhead.
Sweet Truth is a queen proud and mighty – Her throne is in heaven above.
There’s truth in wine, and there may be some in gin and muddy beer; but whether it’s truth worth my knowing, is another question.
Wit is a form of force that leaves the limbs at rest.
I don’t see how a man is to be good for much unless he has some one woman to love him dearly.
A woman’s lot is made for her by the love she accepts.
The right word is always a power, and communicates its definiteness to our action.
A foreman, if he’s got a conscience, and delights in his work, will do his business as well as if he was a partner. I wouldn’t give a penny for a man as ’ud drive a nail in slack because he didn’t get extra pay for it.
Every man’s work, pursued steadily, tends to become an end in itself, and so to bridge over the loveless chasms of his life.
In our spring-time every day has its hidden growths in the mind, as it has in the earth when the little folded blades are getting ready to pierce the ground.
Even success needs its consolations.
An ingenious web of probabilities is the surest screen a wise man can place between himself and the truth.
History, we know, is apt to repeat itself, and to foist very old incidents upon us with only a slight change of costume.
Trouble’s made us kin.
As to people saying a few idle words about us, we must not mind that, any more than the old church steeple minds the rooks cawing about it.