But what we call our despair is often only the painful eagerness of unfed hope.

Perhaps his might be one of the natures where a wise estimate of consequences is fused in the fires of that passionate belief which determines the consequences it believes in.

The sons of Judah have to choose that God may again choose them. The divine principle of our race is action, choice, resolved memory.

Of a truth, Knowledge is power, but it is a power reined by scruple, having a conscience of what must be and what may be; whereas Ignorance is a blind giant who, let him but wax unbound, would make it a sport to seize the pillars that hold up the long-wrought fabric of human good, and turn all the places of joy as dark as a buried Babylon.

Who has not felt the beauty of a woman's arm? The unspeakable suggestions of tenderness that lie in the dimpled elbow, and all the varied gently-lessening curves, down to the delicate wrist, with its tiniest, almost imperceptible nicks in the firm softness.

People who can't be witty exert themselves to be devout and affectionate.

Great feelings will often take the aspect of error, and great faith the aspect of illusion.

It is in these acts called trivialities that the seeds of joy are forever wasted, until men and women look round with haggard faces at the devastation their own waste has made, and say, the earth bears no harvest of sweetness -- calling their denial knowledge.

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

I've never any pity for conceited people, because I think they carry their comfort about with them.