“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.”

Those who trust us educate us.

It is as useless to fight against the interpretations of ignorance as to whip the fog.

That by desiring what is perfectly good, even when we don’t quite know what it is and cannot do what we would, we are part of the divine power against evil — widening the skirts of light and making the struggle with darkness narrower.

It is a common sentence that knowledge is power; but who hath duly considered or set forth the power of ignorance? Knowledge slowly builds up what ignorance in an hour pulls down.

Quarrel? Nonsense; we have not quarreled. If one is not to get into a rage sometimes, what is the good of being friends?

The best travel is that which one can take by one’s own fireside. In memory or imagination.

In bed our yesterdays are too oppressive: if a man can only get up, though it be but to whistle or to smoke, he has a present which offers some resistance to the past-sensations which assert themselves against tyrannous memories.

There is no despair so absolute as that which comes with the first moments of our first great sorrow, when we have not yet known what it is to have suffered and be healed, to have despaired and have recovered hope.

I don’t want the world to give me anything for my books except money enough to save me from the temptation to write only for money.

If we had a keen vision and feeling of all ordinary human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow and the squirrel’s heart beat, and we should die of that roar which lies on the other side of silence.

Consequences are unpitying.

I flutter all ways, and fly in none.

The strongest principle of growth lies in the human choice.

A patronizing disposition always has its meaner side.

Examining the world in order to find consolation is very much like looking carefully over the pages of a great book in order to find our own name . … Whether we find what we want or not, our preoccupation has hindered us from a true knowledge of the contents.

No man can be wise on an empty stomach.

On my gravestone, I want it to say, “I told you I was sick.”

And by a prudent flight and cunning save A life which valour could not, from the grave. A better buckler I can soon regain, But who can get another life again?

Don’t want to end up a cartoon in a cartoon grave yard.

I wouldn’t give one iota to make a trip from the cradle to the grave unless I could live in a competitive world.

Now, girls, if you want to observe a young man hustle out after a pick and shovel, just tell him that your heart is in some other fellow’s grave. Young men are grave-robbers by nature.

The two most precious things this side of the grave are our reputation and our life. But it is to be lamented that the most contemptible whisper may deprive us of the one, and the weakest weapon of the other.

Fame is an undertaker that pays but little attention to the living, but bedizens the dead, furnishes out their funerals, and follows them to the grave

There is a graveyard in my poor heart – dark, heaped-up graves, from which no flowers spring.