"Worldly faces never look so worldly as at a funeral. They have the same effect of grating incongruity as the sound of a coarse voice breaking the solemn silence of night."

"If we had a keen vision of all that is ordinary in human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow or the squirrel's heart beat, and we should die of that roar which is the other side of silence."

"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 have the conviction that excessive literary production is a social offence."

"It seems to me we can never give up longing and wishing while we are thoroughly alive. There are certain things we feel to be beautiful and good, and we must hunger after them."

"What greater thing is there for two human souls than to feel that they are joined - to strengthen each other - to be at one with each other in silent unspeakable memories."

"Opposition may become sweet to a man when he has christened it persecution."

"No evil dooms us hopelessly except the evil we love, and desire to continue in, and make no effort to escape from."

"Excessive literary production is a social offense."

"Nothing is so good as it seems beforehand."

"Harold, like the rest of us, had many impressions which saved him the trouble of distinct ideas."

"Cruelty, like every other vice, requires no motive outside of itself; it only requires opportunity."

"Truth has rough flavours if we bite it through."

"There are many victories worse than a defeat."

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

"When death, the great reconciler, has come, it is never our tenderness that we repent of, but our severity."

"It is a common enough case, that of a man being suddenly captivated by a woman nearly the opposite of his ideal."

"To have in general but little feeling, seems to be the only security against feeling too much on any particular occasion."

"There is a sort of jealousy which needs very little fire; it is hardly a passion, but a blight bred in the cloudy, damp despondency of uneasy egoism."

"We long for an affection altogether ignorant of our faults. Heaven has accorded this to us in the uncritical canine attachment."

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

"The beginning of compunction is the beginning of a new life."

"Falsehood is easy, truth so difficult."

"No great deed is done by falterers who ask for certainty."

"Little children are still the symbol of the eternal marriage between love and duty."

"Failure after long perseverance is much grander than never to have a striving good enough to be called a failure."

"You should read history and look at ostracism, persecution, martyrdom, and that kind of thing. They always happen to the best men, you know."

"For what is love itself, for the one we love best? An enfolding of immeasurable cares which yet are better than any joys outside our love."

"But human experience is usually paradoxical, that means incongruous with the phrases of current talk or even current philosophy."

"Genius at first is little more than a great capacity for receiving discipline."

"It will never rain roses: when we want to have more roses we must plant more trees."

"Mortals are easily tempted to pinch the life out of their neighbour's buzzing glory, and think that such killing is no murder."

"Acting is nothing more or less than playing. The idea is to humanize life."

"In every parting there is an image of death."

"There is no private life which has not been determined by a wider public life."

"We hand folks over to God's mercy, and show none ourselves."

"Jealousy is never satisfied with anything short of an omniscience that would detect the subtlest fold of the heart."

"The important work of moving the world forward does not wait to be done by perfect men."

"Whether happiness may come or not, one should try and prepare one's self to do without it."

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

"The egoism which enters into our theories does not affect their sincerity; rather, the more our egoism is satisfied, the more robust is our belief."

"Adventure is not outside man; it is within."

"The reward of one duty is the power to fulfill another."

"The responsibility of tolerance lies with those who have the wider vision."

"Wear a smile and have friends; wear a scowl and have wrinkles."

"The finest language is mostly made up of simple unimposing words."

"Blessed is the man, who having nothing to say, abstains from giving wordy evidence of the fact."

"It always remains true that if we had been greater, circumstance would have been less strong against us."

"I desire no future that will break the ties with the past."

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