The happiest women, like the happiest nations, have no history.
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There is much pain that is quite noiseless; and vibrations that make human agonies are often a mere whisper in the roar of hurrying existence. There are glances of hatred that stab and raise no cry of murder; robberies that leave man or woman for ever beggared of peace and joy, yet kept secret by the sufferer /committed to no sound except that of low moans in the night, seen in no writing except that made on the face by the slow months of suppressed anguish and early morning tears. Many an inherited sorrow that has marred a life has been breathed into no human ear.
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Delicious autumn! My very soul is wedded to it, and if I were a bird I would fly about the earth seeking the successive autumns.
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There is a sort of jealousy which needs very little fire; it is hardly a passion, but a blight bred in the cloudy, damp despondency of uneasy egoism.
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An election is coming. Universal peace is declared and the foxes have a sincere interest in prolonging the lives of the poultry.
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I do not approve the extermination of the enemy; the policy of exterminating or, as it is barbarously said, liquidating enemies, is one of the most alarming developments of modern war and peace, from the point of view of those who desire the survival
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More helpful than all wisdom is one draught of simple human pity that will not forsake us.
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Donne, I suppose, was such another / Who found no substitute for sense. / To seize and clutch and penetrate; / Expert beyond experience.
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No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be; / Am an attendant lord.
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And indeed there will be time/ To wonder, Do I dare? and, Do I dare?/ Time to turn back and descend the stair,/ With a bald spot in the middle of my hair. . ./ Do I dare/ Disturb the universe?
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The dream crossed twilight between birth and dying.
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Only those who know the supremacy of the intellectual life can understand the grief of one who falls from that serene activity into the absorbing soul-wasting struggle with worldly annoyances.
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People to whom nothing has ever happened cannot understand the unimportance of events.
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We must not inquire too curiously into motives... They are apt to become feeble in the utterance: the aroma is mixed with the grosser air. We must keep the germinating grain away from the light.
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Our high respect for a well read person is praise enough for literature.
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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.
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Let's not be narrow, nasty, and negative.
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Footfalls echo in the memory down the passage which we did not take towards the door we never opened into the rose-garden.
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It always seemed to me a sort of clever stupidity only to have one sort of talent - like a carrier pigeon
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In old days there were angels who came and took men by the hand and led them away from the city of destruction. We see no white-winged angels now. But yet men are led away from threatening destruction: a hand is put into theirs, which leads them forth gently towards a calm and bright land, so that they look no more backward; and the hand may be a little child's.
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The best augury of a man's success in his profession is that he thinks it the finest in the world
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I at least have so much to do in unraveling certain human lots, and seeing how they were woven and interwoven, that all the light I can command must be concentrated on this particular web, and not dispersed over that tempting range of relevancies called the universe.
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That big muscular frame of his held plenty of animal courage, but helped him to no decision when the dangers to be braved were such as could neither be knocked down nor throttled.
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There are glances of hatred that stab, and raise no cry of murder.
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Where is the Life we have lost in living?
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The clock has stopped in the dark.
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In my beginning is my end.
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Books are the quietest and most constant of friends; they are the most accessible and wisest of counselors, and the most patient of teachers.
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Tenants of the house, / Thoughts of a dry brain in a dry season.
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Each thought is a nail that is driven In structures that cannot decay; And the mansion at last will be given To us as we build it each day.
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