There was never a night that had no morn.
When the ship is going down we trouble ourselves little enough about the style of the cabin furniture.
. . . what a fatal thing in pictures, books, or human lives, is a lack of proportion.
The life of action is nobler than the life of thought.
Better no marriage, than a marriage short of the best.
Autumn to winter, winter into spring, Spring into summer, summer into fall,-- So rolls the changing year, and so we change; Motion so swift, we know not that we move.
Keep what is worth keeping and with the breath of kindness blow the rest away.
Unless a woman has a decided pleasure and facility in teaching, an honest knowledge of everything she professes to impart, a liking for children, and, above all, a strong moral sense of her responsibility towards them, for her to attempt to enroll herself in the scholastic order is absolute profanation.
How the sting of poverty, or small means, is gone when one keeps house for one's own comfort and not for the comfort of one's neighbors.
there is nothing so absolute as the tyranny of weakness.
genius is original, unique; and in whatever form it may develop itself is the greatest gift that can be given to man, the strongest known link between the material life we have and the spiritual life that we can only guess at. Every great poet, painter, or musician - every inventor or man of science, every fine actor or orator, comes to us as the exponent of something diviner than we know. We cannot understand it, but we feel it, and acknowledge it.
The present only is a man's possession; the past is gone out of his hand wholly, irrevocably. He may suffer from it, learn from it,--in degree, perhaps, expiate it; but to brood over it is utter madness.
Happiness is not an end it is only a means, and adjunct, a consequence. The Omnipotent Himself could never be supposed by any, save those who out of their own human selfishness construct the attributes of Divinity, to be absorbed throughout eternity in the contemplation of His own ineffable bliss, were it not identical with His ineffable goodness and love.
Mine to the core of the heart, my beauty! Mine, all mine, and for love, not duty: Love given willingly, full and free, Love for love's sake - as mine to thee. Duty's a slave that keeps the keys, But Love, the master, goes in and out Of his goodly chambers with song and shout, Just as he please - just as he please.
O, the mulberry-tree is of trees the queen! Bare long after the rest are green; But as time steals onwards, while none perceives Slowly she clothes herself with leaves.
We have not to construct human nature afresh, but to take it as we find it, and make the best of it.
What comfort there is in a cheerful spirit! how the heart leaps up to meet a sunshiny face, a merry tongue, an even temper, and a heart which either naturally, or, what is better, from conscientious principle, has learned to take all things on their bright side, believing that the Giver of life being all-perfect Love, the best offering we can make to Him is to enjoy to the full what He sends of good, and bear what He allows of evil!
Autumn Into earth's lap does throw Brown apples gay in a game of play, As the equinoctials blow.
Not perhaps until later life, until the follies, passions, and selfishness of youth have died out, do we. . . recognize the the inestimable blessing, the responsibility awful as sweet, of possessing or of being a friend.
God makes many poets, but he only gives utterance to a few.