What novelty is worth the sweet monotony where everything is known, and loved because it is known?
There is a mercy which is weakness, and even treason against the common good.
It is a wonderful subduer-this need of love, this hunger of the heart.
There is no sorrow I have thought more about than that-to love what is great, and try to reach it, and yet to fail.
Half the sorrows of women would be averted if they could repress the speech they know to be useless-nay, the speech they have resolved not to utter.
A good solid bit of work lasts.
There’s no disappointment in memory, and one’s exaggerations are always on the good side.
There is heroism even in the circles of hell for fellow-sinners who cling to each other in the fiery whirlwind and never recriminate.
The words of genius have a wider meaning than the thought that prompted them.
The mother’s love is at first an absorbing delight, blunting all other sensibilities; it is an expansion of the animal existence.
Anger seek it prey, – Something to tear with sharp-edged tooth and claw, Like not to go off hungry, leaving Love To feast on milk and honeycomb at will.
A man deep-wounded may feel too much pain To feel much anger.
Beauty is part of the finished language by which goodness speaks.
Childhood has no forebodings; but then, it is soothed by no memories of outlived sorrow.
There is no killing the suspicion that deceit has once begotten.
The dew-bead Gem of earth and sky begotten.
Mysterious haunts of echoes old and far, The voice divine of human loyalty.
A girl of eighteen imagines the feelings behind the face that has moved her with its sympathetic youth as easily as primitive people imagined the humors of the gods in fair weather. What is she to believe in if not in this vision woven from within?
What furniture can give such finish to a room as a tender woman’s face? And is there any harmony of tints that has such stirring of delight as the sweet modulation of her voice?
We are not apt to fear for the fearless, when we are companions in their danger.