Through suffering we have endured the assaults of time; reverses have ever been our beginning; and out of the depths God has gathered us to his heart.
Every wave, regardless of how high and forceful it crests, must eventually collapse within itself.
Often the presence of mind and energy of a person remote from the spotlight decide the course of history for centuries to come.
How terrible this darkness was, how bewildering, and yet mysteriously beautiful!
In this instant, shaken to her very depths, this ecstatic human being has a first inkling that the soul is made of stuff so mysteriously elastic that a single event can make it big enough to contain the infinite.
Never can the innate power of a work be hidden or locked away. A work of art can be forgotten by time; it can be forbidden and rejected but the elemental will always prevail over the ephemeral.
It would be foolhardy to count on the conscience of the world.
It is the way of youth that each fresh piece of knowledge of life should go to its head, and that once uplifted by an emotion it can never have enough of it.
There is no sense to a sacrifice after you come to feel that it is a sacrifice.
Nothing that has ever been thought and said with a clear mind and pure ethical strength is totally in vain; even if it comes froma weak hand and is imperfectly formed, it inspires the ethical spirit to constantly renewed creation.
Whatever a woman’s reason may say, her feelings tell her the truth.
The union of opposites, in so far as they are really complementary, always results in the most perfect harmony; and the seemingly incongruous is often the most natural.
Names have a mysterious transforming power. Like a ring on a finger, a name may at first seem merely accidental, committing you to nothing; but before you realize its magical power, it’s gotten under your skin, become part of you and your destiny.
One can run away from anything but oneself.
Long-protracted suffering is apt to exhaust not only the invalid, but the compassion of others; violent emotions cannot be prolonged endlessly.
We can’t forever be spending our lives paying for political follies that never gave us anything but always took from us, and I amcontent with the narrowest metes and bounds provided I have peace and quiet for work.
Only ambition is fired by the coincidences of success and easy accomplishment.
The instinct for self-deception in human beings makes them try to banish from their minds dangers of which at bottom they are perfectly aware by declaring them non-existent.
Dostoevsky was the first to reveal to us this teeming multiplicity of emotions, this complexity of our spiritual universe.
Life is futile unless it be directed towards a definite goal.