It is never too late to be what you might have been.
George Eliot
Our dead are never dead to us, until we have forgotten them.
Delicious autumn! My very soul is wedded to it, and if I were a bird I would fly about the earth seeking the successive autumns.
Animals are such agreeable friends - they ask no questions; they pass no criticisms.
What do we live for, if not to make life less difficult for each other?
Wear a smile and have friends; wear a scowl and have wrinkles.
It will never rain roses: when we want to have more roses we must plant more trees.
Blessed is the influence of one true, loving human soul on another.
The strongest principle of growth lies in the human choice.
Life began with waking up and loving my mother's face.
Blessed is the man, who having nothing to say, abstains from giving wordy evidence of the fact.
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.
Great things are not done by impulse, but by a series of small things brought together.
What loneliness is more lonely than distrust?
The golden moments in the stream of life rush past us, and we see nothing but sand; the angels come to visit us, and we only know them when they are gone.
He was like a cock who thought the sun had risen to hear him crow.
Our deeds determine us, as much as we determine our deeds.
The important work of moving the world forward does not wait to be done by perfect men.
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.
Adventure is not outside man; it is within.
All meanings, we know, depend on the key of interpretation.
Only in the agony of parting do we look into the depths of love.
It is a narrow mind which cannot look at a subject from various points of view.
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.
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.
Our words have wings, but fly not where we would.
I like not only to be loved, but also to be told I am loved.
Excellence encourages one about life generally; it shows the spiritual wealth of the world.
An election is coming. Universal peace is declared, and the foxes have a sincere interest in prolonging the lives of the poultry.
The responsibility of tolerance lies with those who have the wider vision.
Nothing is so good as it seems beforehand.
But what we call our despair is often only the painful eagerness of unfed hope.
I'm not denyin' the women are foolish. God Almighty made 'em to match the men.
There are many victories worse than a defeat.
The happiest women, like the happiest nations, have no history.
The reward of one duty is the power to fulfill another.
The world is full of hopeful analogies and handsome, dubious eggs, called possibilities.
Cruelty, like every other vice, requires no motive outside of itself; it only requires opportunity.
One must be poor to know the luxury of giving!
Our deeds still travel with us from afar, and what we have been makes us what we are.
Might, could, would - they are contemptible auxiliaries.
The beginning of compunction is the beginning of a new life.
The years between fifty and seventy are the hardest. You are always being asked to do things, and yet you are not decrepit enough to turn them down.
Marriage must be a relation either of sympathy or of conquest.
Death is the king of this world: 'Tis his park where he breeds life to feed him. Cries of pain are music for his banquet.
We long for an affection altogether ignorant of our faults. Heaven has accorded this to us in the uncritical canine attachment.
Little children are still the symbol of the eternal marriage between love and duty.
When death comes it is never our tenderness that we repent from, but our severity.
Breed is stronger than pasture.
No story is the same to us after a lapse of time; or rather we who read it are no longer the same interpreters.
