I saw thee ne’er before; I see thee never more; But love, and help, and pain, beautiful one, Have made thee mine, till all my years are done.
But words are vain; reject them all – They utter but a feeble part: Hear thou the depths from which they call, The voiceless longing of my heart.
I rose as from the death that wipes out the sadness of life, and then dies itself in the new morrow.
And her life will perhaps be the richer, for holding now within it the memory of what came, but could not stay.
I repent me of the ignorance wherein I ever said that God made man out of nothing: there is no nothing out of which to make anything; God is all in all, and he made us out of himself.
I am sometimes almost terrified at the scope of the demands made upon me, at the perfection of the self-abandonment required of me; yet outside of such absoluteness can be no salvation.
Until a man has love, it is well he should have fear. So long as there are wild beasts about, it is better to be afraid than secure.
I tell you, there are more worlds, and more doors to them, than you will think of in many years!
She would wonder what had hurt her when she found her face wet with tears, and then would wonder how she could have been hurt without knowing it.
Primarily, God is not bound to punish sin; he is bound to destroy sin. The only vengeance worth having on sin is to make the sinner himself its executioner.
Somehow, I can’t say how, it tells me that all is right; that it is coming to swallow up all cries.
Well, perhaps; but I begin to think there are better things than being comfortable.
I watched her departure, as one watches a sunset. She went like a radiance through the dark wood, which was henceforth bright to me, from simply knowing that such a creature was in it.
But we believe – nay, Lord we only hope, That one day we shall thank thee perfectly For pain and hope and all that led or drove Us back into the bosom of thy love.
There is no slave but the creature that wills against its Creator.
The part of the philanthropist is indeed a dangerous one; and the man who would do his neighbour good must first study how not to do him evil, and must begin by pulling the beam out of his own eye.
Remember, then, that whoever does not mean good is always in danger of harm. But I try to give everybody fair play, and those that are in the wrong are in far more need of it always than those who are in the right: they can afford to do without it.
Our life is no dream; but it ought to become one, and perhaps will.
Her heart – like every heart, if only its fallen sides were cleared away – was an inexhaustible fountain of love: she loved everything she saw.
There is no strength in unbelief. Even the unbelief of what is false is no source of might. It is the truth shining from behind that gives the strength to disbelieve.