Every woman is supposed to have the same set of motives, or else to be a monster. |
Failure after long perseverance is much grander than never to have a striving good enough to be called a failure. |
Falsehood is easy, truth so difficult. |
For character too is a process and an unfolding... among our valued friends is there not someone or other who is a little too self confident and disdainful; whose distinguished mind is a little spotted with commonness; who is a little pinched here and protuberant there with native prejudices; or whose better energies are liable to lapse down the wrong channel under the influence of transient solicitations? |
For what is love itself, for the one we love best? - an enfolding of immeasurable cares which yet are better than any joys outside our love |
For what we call illusions are often, in truth, a wider vision of past and present realities --a willing movement of a man's soul with the larger sweep of the world's forces --a movement towards a more assured end than the chances of a single life. |
Formerly, his heart had been as a locked casket with its treasure inside; but now the casket was empty, and the lock was broken. Left groping in darkness, with his prop utterly gone, Silas had inevitably a sense, though a dull and half-despairing one, that if any help came to him it must come from without; and there was a slight stirring of expectation at the sight of his fellow-men, a faint consciousness of dependence on their goodwill. |
Friendships begin with liking or gratitude roots that can be pulled up. |
Genius at first is little more than a great capacity for receiving discipline. |
Gossip is a sort of smoke that comes from the dirty tobacco-pipes of those who diffuse it: it proves nothing but the bad taste of the smoker. |
Habit is the beneficent harness of routine which enables silly men to live respectfully and unhappy men to live calmly |
Harold, like the rest of us, had many impressions which saved him the trouble of distinct ideas. |
Hatred is like fire - it makes even light rubbish deadly |
He was at a starting point which makes many a man's career a fine subject for betting, if there were any gentlemen given to that amusement who could appreciate the complicated probabilities of an arduous purpose . . . |
He was like the cock who thought the sun had risen to hear him crow |