It is a wonderful subduer, this need of love-this hunger of the heart-as peremptory as that other hunger by which Nature forces us to submit to the yoke, and change the face of the world.
Among all the many kinds of first love, that which begins in childish companionship is the strongest and most enduring: when passion comes to unite its force to long affection, love is at its spring-tide.
Our consciousness rarely registers the beginning of a growth within us any more than without us; there have been many circulation of the sap before we detect the smallest sign of the bud.
The scornful nostril and the high head gather not the odors that lie on the track of truth.
I care only to know, if possible, the lasting meaning that lies in all religious doctrine from the beginning till now.
History repeats itself.
To an old memory like mine the present days are but as a little water poured on the deep.
Memory, when duly impregnated with ascertained facts, is sometimes surprisingly fertile.
Vague memories hang about the mind like cobwebs.
There are answers which, in turning away wrath, only send it to the other end of the room, and to have a discussion coolly waived when you feel that justice is all on your own side is even more exasperating in marriage than in philosophy.
It is the way with half the truth amidst which we live, that it only haunts us and makes dull pulsations that are never born into sound.
The very truth hath a colour from the disposition of the utterer.
Our thoughts are often worse than we are.
Uncomfortable thoughts must be got rid of by good intentions for the future.
The sense of an entailed disadvantage – the deformed foot doubtfully hidden by the shoe, makes a restlessly active spiritual yeast, and easily turns a self-centered, unloving nature into an Ishmaelite.
No man is matriculated to the art of life till he has been well tempted.
I’ve been turning it over in after-dinner speeches, but it looks awkward-it’s not what people are used to-it wants a good deal of Latin to make it go down.
You know nothing about Hope, that immortal, delicious maiden forever courted forever propitious, whom fools have called deceitful, as if it were Hope that carried the cup of disappointment, whereas it is her deadly enemy, Certainty, whom she only es.
One’s self-satisfaction is an untaxed kind of property which it is very unpleasant to find deprecated.
Ignorance is not so damnable as humbug, but when it prescribes pills it may happen to do more harm.