The years between fifty and seventy are the hardest. You are always being asked to do things, and yet you are not decrepit enough to turn them down.
To have in general but little feeling, seems to be the only security against feeling too much on any particular occasion.
Animals are such agreeable friends – they ask no questions; they pass no criticisms.
There is a chill air surrounding those who are down in the world, and people are glad to get away from them, as from a cold room.
All passion becomes strength when it has an outlet.
Adventure is not outside man; it is within.
The finest language is mostly made up of simple unimposing words.
The reward of one duty is the power to fulfill another.
There is only one failure in life possible, and that is not to be true to the best one knows.
We hand folks over to God’s mercy, and show none ourselves.
Rome – the city of visible history, where the past of a whole hemisphere seems moving in funeral procession with strange ancestral images and trophies gathered from afar.
Will not a tiny speck very close to our vision blot out the glory of the world, and leave only a margin by which we see the blot? I know no speck so troublesome as self.
I’m proof against that word failure. I’ve seen behind it. The only failure a man ought to fear is failure of cleaving to the purpose he sees to be best.
Play not with paradoxes. That caustic which you handle in order to scorch others may happen to sear your own fingers and make them dead to the quality of things.
A friend is one to whom one may pour out the contents of one’s heart, chaff and grain together, knowing that gentle hands will take and sift it, keep what is worth keeping, and with a breath of kindness, blow the rest away.
Miss Brooke had that kind of beauty which seems to be thrown into relief by poor dress.
It is always fatal to have music or poetry interrupted.
It is surely better to pardon too much, than to condemn too much.
Those who trust us educate us.
Every year strips us of at least one vain expectation, and teaches us to reckon some solid good in its stead.