“I desire no future that will break the ties of the past.”

“Heaven help us,” said the old religion; the new one, from its very lack of that faith, will teach us all the more to help one another.

There is only one failure in life possible, and that is not to be true to the best one knows.

Our deeds still travel with us from afar, and what we have been makes us what we are.

What a wretched lot of old shrivelled creatures we shall be by-and-by. Never mind – the uglier we get in the eyes of others, the lovelier we shall be to each other; that has always been my firm faith about friendship.

What do we live for, if not to make life less difficult for each other?

I like breakfast-time better than any other moment in the day. No dust has settled on one’s mind then, and it presents a clear mirror to the rays of things.

It is hard to believe long together that anything is “worth while,” unless there is some eye to kindle in common with our own, some brief word uttered now and then to imply that what is infinitely precious to us is precious alike to another mind.

Blessed is the influence of one true, loving human soul on another.

She was no longer wrestling with the grief, but could sit down with it as a lasting companion and make it a sharer in her thoughts.

I like not only to be loved, but to be told that I am loved; the realm of silence is large enough beyond the grave.

What makes life dreary is the want of a motive.

Much of our waking experience is but a dream in the daylight.

Will not a tiny speck very close to our vision blot out the glory of the world, and leave only a margin by which we see the blot? I know no speck so troublesome as self.

I love not to be choked with other men’s thoughts.

What destroys us most effectively is not a malign fate but our own capacity for self-deception and for degrading our own best self.

Our deeds determine us, as much as we determine our deeds.