There is always a pleasure in unravelling a mystery, in catching at the gossamer clue which will guide to certainty.

How easy it is to judge rightly after one sees what evil comes from judging wrongly.

Nothing like the act of eating for equalizing men. Dying is nothing to it.

Loyalty and obedience to wisdom and justice are fine; but it is still finer to defy arbitrary power, unjustly and cruelly used--not on behalf of ourselves, but on behalf of others more helpless.

Were all men equal to-night, some would get the start by rising an hour earlier to-morrow.

There is nothing like wounded affection for giving poignancy to anger.

The cloud never comes in that quarter of the horizon from which we watch for it.

People may flatter themselves just as much by thinking that their faults are always present to other people's minds, as if they believe that the world is always contemplating their individual charms and virtues.

Thinking has, many a time, made me sad, darling; but doing never did in all my life.

Blot your misdeeds out (if you are particularly conscientious), by a good deed, as soon as you can; just as we did a correct sum at school on the slate, where an incorrect one was only half rubbed out. It was better than wetting our sponge with our tears; both less loss of time where tears had to be waited for, and a better effect at last.

I'll not listen to reason…Reason always means what someone else has got to say.

Oh, I can't describe my home. It is home, and I can't put its charm into words.

Perhaps all our earthly trials will appear foolish to us after a while; perhaps they seem so now to angels. But we are ourselves, you know, and this is now, not some time to come, a long, long way off. And we are not angels, to be comforted by seeing the ends for which everything is sent.

But suppose it was truth double strong, it were no truth to me if I couldna take it in. I daresay there's truth in yon Latin book on your shelves; but it's gibberish and no truth to me, unless I know the meaning o' the words.

Ask , and it shall be given until you. That is no vain or untried promise.

The monotonous life led by invalids often makes them like children, inasmuch as thy have neither of them any sense of proportion in events, and seem each to believe that the walls and curtains which shut in their world, and shut out everything else, must of necessity be larger than anything hidden beyond.

I would far rather have two or three lilies of the valley gathered for me by a person I like, than the most expensive bouquet that could be bought!

I was right. I think that must be an hereditary quality, for my father says he is scarcely ever wrong.

The future must be met, however stern and iron it be.

It is the first changes among familiar things that make such a mystery of time to the young; afterwards we lose the sense of the mysterious.

Trust a girl of sixteen for knowing well if she is pretty; concerning her plainness she may be ignorant.

Margaret was not a ready lover, but where she loved she loved passionately, and with no small degree of jealousy.

The French girls would tell you, to believe that you were pretty would make you so.

I do not look on self-indulgent, sensual people as worthy of my hatred; I simply look upon them with contempt for their poorness of character.

Similarity of opinion is not always—I think not often—needed for fullness and perfection of love.

A little credulity helps one on through life very smoothly.

God has made us so that we must be mutually dependent. We may ignore our own dependence, or refuse to acknowledge that others depend upon us in more respects than the payment of weekly wages; but the thing must be, nevertheless. Neither you nor any other master can help yourselves. The most proudly independent man depends on those around him for their insensible influence on his character - his life.

A wise parent humours the desire for independent action, so as to become the friend and adviser when his absolute rule shall cease.

It is odd enough to see how the entrance of a person of the opposite sex into an assemblage of either men or women calms down the little discordances and the disturbance of mood.

Those who are happy and successful themselves are too apt to make light of the misfortunes of others

Economy was always "elegant", and money-spending always "vulgar and ostentatious"; a sort of sour-grapeism, which made us very peaceful and satisfied.

I take it that “gentleman” is a term that only describes a person in his relation to others; but when we speak of him as “a man” , we consider him not merely with regard to his fellow men, but in relation to himself, - to life – to time – to eternity. A cast-away lonely as Robinson Crusoe- a prisoner immured in a dungeon for life – nay, even a saint in Patmos, has his endurance, his strength, his faith, best described by being spoken of as “a man”. I am rather weary of this word “gentlemanly” which seems to me to be often inappropriately used, and often too with such exaggerated distortion of meaning, while the full simplicity of the noun “man”, and the adjective “manly” are unacknowledged.

Sometimes one likes foolish people for their folly, better than wise people for their wisdom.