Presentiments are strange things: and so are sympathies; and so are signs; and the three combined make one mystery to which humanity has not yet found the key.
The idea of seeing the sea – of being near it – watching its changes by sunrise, sunset, moonlight, and noonday – in calm, perhaps in storm – fills and satisfies my mind.
Such is the imperfect nature of man! such spots are there on the disc of the clearest planet; and eyes like Miss Scatcherd’s can only see those minute defects, and are blind to the full brightness of the orb.
Oh madam, when you put bread and cheese, instead of burnt porridge, into these children’s mouths, you may indeed feed their vile bodies, but you little think how you starve their immortal souls!
My home is humble and unattractive to strangers, but to me it contains what I shall find nowhere else in the world – the … affection which brothers and sisters feel for each other.
No mockery in this world ever sounds to me so hollow as that of being told to cultivate happiness. What does such advice mean? Happiness is not a potato, to be planted in mould, and tilled with manure.
When we are struck at without a reason, we should strike back again very hard; I am sure we should – so hard as to teach the person who struck us never to do it again.
I doubt if I have made the best use of all my calamities. Soft, amiable natures they would have refined to saintliness; of strong, evil spirits they would have made demons; as for me, I have only been a woe-struck and selfish woman.
The cool peace and dewy sweetness of the night filled me with a mood of hope: not hope on any definite point, but a general sense of encouragement and heart-ease.
