Mighty is the force of motherhood! It transforms all things by its vital heat.
Things are achieved when they are well begun.
The pride of the body is a barrier against the gifts that purify the soul.
Doubtless a great anguish may do the work of years, and we may come out from that baptism of fire with a soul full of new awe and new pity.
The yoke a man creates for himself by wrong-doing will breed hate in the kindliest nature.
It’s all one web, sir. The prosperity of the country is one web.
Trouble comes to us all in this life: we set our hearts on things which it isn’t God’s will for us to have, and then we go sorrowing.
All our ignorance brings us closer to death.
I think what we call the dullness of things is a disease in ourselves. Else how could anyone find an intense interest in life? And many do.
Say “I love you” to those you love. The eternal silence is long enough to be silent in, and that awaits us all.
It is possible to have a strong self-love without any self-satisfaction, rather with a self-discontent which is the more intense because one’s own little core of egoistic sensibility is a supreme care.
To have suffered much is like knowing many languages. Thou hast learned to understand all.
There was no gleam, no shadow, for the heavens, too, were one still, pale cloud; no sound or motion in anything but the dark river that flowed and moaned like an unresting sorrow.
A good horse makes short miles.
Strange, that some of us, with quick alternate vision, see beyond our infatuations, and even while we rave on the heights, behold the wide plain where our persistent self pauses and awaits us.
There is a sort of subjection which is the peculiar heritage of largeness and of love; and strength is often only another name for willing bondage to irremediable weakness.
Would not love see returning penitence afar off, and fall on its neck and kiss it?
Where women love each other, men learn to smother their mutual dislike.
A supreme love, a motive that gives a sublime rhythm to a woman’s life, and exalts habit into partnership with the soul’s highest needs, is not to be had where and how she wills.
One soweth and another reapeth is a verity that applies to evil as well as good.