1. "All meanings, we know, depend on the key of interpretation."
2. "And when a woman's will is as strong as the man's who wants to govern her, half her strength must be concealment."
3. "Anger and jealousy can no more bear to lose sight of their objects than love."
4. "Animals are such agreeable friends, they ask no questions, they pass no criticisms."
5. "Any coward can fight a battle when he's sure of winning, but give me the man who has pluck to fight when he's sure of losing. That's my way, sir; and there are many victories worse than a defeat."
6. "A supreme love, a motive that gives a sublime rhythm to a woman's life, and exalts habit into partnership with the soul's highest needs, is not to be had where and how she wills."
7. "Blessed is the influence of one true, loving human soul on another."
8. ”Blessed is the man who, having nothing to say, abstains from giving wordy evidence of that fact.”
9. "Blows are sarcasm's turned stupid."
10. “Books are the quietest and most constant of friends; they are the most accessible and wisest of counselors, and the most patient of teachers.”
11. "But most of us are apt to settle within ourselves that the man who blocks our way is odious, and not to mind causing him a little of the disgust which his personality excites in ourselves."
12. "But that intimacy of mutual embarrassment, in which each feels that the other is feeling something, having once existed, its effect is not to be done away with."
13. "But what we call our despair is often only the painful eagerness of unfed hope.
14. "Certainly, the mistakes that we male and female mortals make when we have our own way might fairly raise some wonder that we're so fond of it."
15. "Children demand that their heroes should be freckleless, and easily believe them so: perhaps a first discovery to the contrary is less revolutionary shock to a passionate child than the threatened downfall of habitual beliefs which makes the world seem to totter for us in maturer life."
16. “Correct English is the slang of prigs who write history and essays. And the strongest slang of all is the slang of poets.”
17. “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.”
18. "Each thought is a nail that is driven In structures that cannot decay; And the mansion at last will be given To us as we build it each day."
19. “Falsehood is so easy, truth so difficult! Examine your words well and you will find that even when you have no motive to be false, it is very hard to say the exact truth, even about your own immediate feelings — much harder than to say something fine about them which is not the exact truth.”
20. "For character too is a process and an unfolding... among our valued friends is there not someone or other who is a little too self confident and disdainful; whose distinguished mind is a little spotted with commonness; who is a little pinched here and protuberant there with native prejudices; or whose better energies are liable to lapse down the wrong channel under the influence of transient solicitations?"
21. "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."
22. "For what we call illusions are often, in truth, a wider vision of past and present realities --a willing movement of a man's soul with the larger sweep of the world's forces --a movement towards a more assured end than the chances of a single life."
23. "Friendship is the joy, the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person, having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words, but pouring all right out as they are, chaff and grain together, confident that a faithful, friendly hand will take and sift them, keep what is worth keeping, and with a breath of comfort, blow the rest away."
24. "Great feelings will often take the aspect of error, and great faith the aspect of illusion."
25. "Here undoubtedly lies the chief poetic energy: --in the force of imagination that pierces or exalts the solid fact, instead of floating among cloud-pictures."
26. "He said he should prefer not to know the sources of the Nile, and that there should be some unknown regions preserved as hunting-grounds for the poetic imagination."
27. "How could a man be satisfied with a decision between such alternatives and under such circumstances? No more than he can be satisfied with his hat, which he's chosen from among such shapes as the resources of the age offer him, wearing it at best with a resignation which is chiefly supported by comparison."
28. "Gossip is a sort of smoke that comes from the dirty tobacco-pipes of those who diffuse it: it proves nothing but the bad taste of the smoker."
29. "I at least have so much to do in unraveling certain human lots, and seeing how they were woven and interwoven, that all the light I can command must be concentrated on this particular web, and not dispersed over that tempting range of relevancies called the universe."
30. "I desire no future that will break the ties with the past."
31. "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. As it is, the best of us walk about well wadded with stupidity."
32. "I like not only to be loved, but also to be told that I am loved. I am not sure that you are of the same kind. But the realm of silence is large enough beyond the grave. This is the world of literature and speech and I shall take leave to tell you that you are very dear."
33. “I'm not denyin' the women are foolish: God Almighty made 'em to match the men.”
34. "I'm proof against that word failure. I've seen behind it. The only failure a man ought to fear is failure of cleaving to the purpose he sees to be best.”
35. "In all private quarrels the duller nature is triumphant by reason of dullness."
36. “In every parting there is an image of death.”
37. "In spite of his practical ability, some of his experience had petrified into maxims and quotations."
38. "It is never too late to be what you might have been.
39. "Is it not rather what we expect in men, that they should have numerous strands of experience lying side by side and never compare them with each other?"
40. "It is, I fear, but a vain show of fulfilling the heathen precept, ''Know thyself,'' and too often leads to a self-estimate which will subsist in the absence of that fruit by which alone the quality of the tree is made evident."
41. “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.”
42. "It was not that she was out of temper, but that the world was not equal to the demands of her fine organism."
43. "It will never rain roses: when we want to have more roses we must plant more trees."
44. “I've never any pity for conceited people, because I think they carry their comfort about with them.”
45. “Kisses honeyed by oblivion.”
46. "Keep true, never be ashamed of doing right; decide on what you think is right and stick to it."
47. "Life is measured by the rapidity of change, the succession of influences that modify the being."
48. "Life is too precious to be spent in this weaving and unweaving of false impressions, and it is better to live quietly under some degree of misrepresentation than to attempt to remove it by the uncertain process of letter-writing."
49. “Little children are still the symbol of the eternal marriage between love and duty.”
50. "Marriage must be a relation either of sympathy or of conquest."
51. “Men can do nothing without the make-believe of a beginning. Even Science, the strict measurer, is obliged to start with a make-believe unit, and must fix on a point in the stars' unceasing journey when his sidereal clock shall pretend that time is Nought. His less accurate grandmother Poetry has always been understood to start in the middle; but on reflection it appears that her proceeding is not very different from his; since Science, too, reckons backward as well as forward, divides his unit into billions, and with his clock-finger at Nought really sets off in medias res. No retrospect will take us to the true beginning; and whether our prologue be in heaven or on earth, it is but a fraction of that all-presupposing fact with which our story sets out.”
52. "Men's men: gentle or simple, they're much of a muchness."
53. "More helpful than all wisdom is one draught of simple human pity that will not forsake us."
54. "Most of us who turn to any subject we love remember some morning or evening hour when we got on a high stool to reach down an untried volume, or sat with parted lips listening to a new talker, or for very lack of books began to listen to the voices within, as the first traceable beginning of our love."
55. "My own experience and development deepen everyday my conviction that our moral progress may be measured by the degree in which we sympathize with individual suffering and individual joy."
56. "No compliment can be eloquent, except as an expression of indifference."
57. "No great deed is done by falterers who ask for certainty."
58. "No story is the same to us after a lapse of time; or rather we who read it are no longer the same interpreters."
59. “Nothing is so good as it seems beforehand.”
60. "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."
61. "One must be poor to know the luxury of giving."
62. “One way of getting an idea of our fellow-countrymen's miseries is to go and look at their pleasures.”
63. "Only those who know the supremacy of the intellectual life can understand the grief of one who falls from that serene activity into the absorbing soul-wasting struggle with worldly annoyances."
64. “Opposition may become sweet to a man when he has christened it persecution.”
65. "Our dead are never dead to us, until we have forgotten them."
66. "Our instructed vagrancy, which has hardly time to linger by the hedgerows, but runs away early to the tropics, and is at home with palms and banyans --which is nourished on books of travel, and stretches the theatre of its imagination to the Zambesi.
67. “Our passions do not live apart in locked chambers, but, dressed in their small wardrobe of notions, bring their provisions to a common table and mess together, feeding out of the common store according to their appetite.”
68. "Our virtues are dearer to us the more we have had to suffer for them. It is the same with our children. All profound affection entertains a sacrifice. Our thoughts are often worse than we are, just as they are often better."
69. "Our words have wings, but fly not where we would."
70. “Pain is no evil unless it conquers us.”
71. “People were so ridiculous with their illusions, carrying their fool's caps unawares, thinking their own lies opaque while everyone else's were transparent, making themselves exceptions to everything, as if when all the world looked yellow under a lamp, they alone were rosy.”
72. "People who can't be witty exert themselves to be devout and affectionate."
73. "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."
74. “Perspective, as its inventor remarked, is a beautiful thing. What horrors of damp huts, where human beings languish, may not become picturesque through aerial distance! What hymning of cancerous vices may we not languish over as sublimest art in the safe remoteness of a strange language and artificial phrase! Yet we keep a repugnance to rheumatism and other painful effects when presented in our personal experience.”
75. "Play not with paradoxes. That caustic which you handle in order to scorch others may happen to sear your own fingers and make them dead to the quality of things."
76. "Quarrel? Nonsense; we have not quarreled. If one is not to get into a rage sometimes, what is the good of being friends?"
77. "Speech is often barren; but silence also does not necessarily brood over a full nest. Your still fowl, blinking at you without remark, may all the while be sitting on one addled egg; and when it takes to cackling will have nothing to announce but that addled delusion."
78. "Strange, that some of us, with quick alternate vision, see beyond our infatuations, and even while we rave on the heights, behold the wide plain where our persistent self pauses and awaits us."
79. "Sympathetic people often don't communicate well, they back reflected images which hide their own depths."
80. “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.”
81. "Renunciation remains sorrow, though a sorrow borne willingly.”
82. "The beginning of an acquaintance whether with persons or things is to get a definite outline of our ignorance."
83. "The desire to conquer is itself a sort of subjection."
84. "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."
85. "The finest language is mostly made up of simple unimposing words."
86. "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."
87. "The growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistorical acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs."
88. “The happiest women, like the happiest nations, have no history.”
89. "The important work of moving the world forward does not wait to be done by perfect men."
90. "The intense happiness of our union is derived in a high degree from the perfect freedom with which we each follow and declare our own impressions."
91. “The moment of finding a fellow-creature is often as full of mingled doubt and exultation, as the moment of finding an idea.”
92. "The only failure one should fear, is not hugging to the purpose they see as best."
93. "The presence of a noble nature, generous in its wishes, ardent in its charity, changes the lights for us: we begin to see things again in their larger, quieter masses, and to believe that we too can be seen and judged in the wholeness of our character."
94. "There are some cases in which the sense of injury breeds -- not the will to inflict injuries and climb over them as a ladder, but -- a hatred of all injury."
95. "There are various orders of beauty, causing men to make fools of themselves in various styles... but there is one order of beauty which seems made to turn the heads not only of men, but of all intelligent mammals, even of women. It is a beauty like that of kittens, or very small downy ducks making gentle rippling noises with their soft bills, or babies just beginning to toddle and to engage in conscious mischief --a beauty with which you can never be angry, but that you feel ready to crush for inability to comprehend the state of mind into which it throws you."
96. "There is a great deal of unmapped country within us which would have to be taken into account in an explanation of our gusts and storms."
97. "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."
98. "There is a sort of subjection which is the peculiar heritage of largeness and of love; and strength is often only another name for willing bondage to irremediable weakness."
99. "There is much pain that is quite noiseless; and vibrations that make human agonies are often a mere whisper in the roar of hurrying existence. There are glances of hatred that stab and raise no cry of murder; robberies that leave man or woman for ever beggared of peace and joy, yet kept secret by the sufferer --committed to no sound except that of low moans in the night, seen in no writing except that made on the face by the slow months of suppressed anguish and early morning tears. Many an inherited sorrow that has marred a life has been breathed into no human ear."
100. “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.”
101. "There is no private life which has not been determined by a wider public life."
102. "There is nothing that will kill a man so soon as having nobody to find fault with but himself."
103. "There is only one failure in life possible, and that is not to be true to the best one knows."
104. “These gems have life in them: their colors speak,
Say what words fail of.”
105. “The strongest principle of growth lies in the human choice.”
106. "Those who trust us educate us."
107. “'Tis what I love determines how I love.”
108. "To have in general but little feeling, seems to be the only security against feeling too much on any particular occasion."
109. "Wear a smile and have friends; wear a scowl and have wrinkles. What do we live for if not to make the world less difficult for each other?"
110. "We hand folks over to God's mercy, and show none ourselves."
111. "We must find our duties in what comes to us, not in what might have been."
112. "We women are always in danger of living too exclusively in the affections; and though our affections are perhaps the best gifts we have, we ought also to have our share of the more independent life -- some joy in things for their own sake. It is piteous to see the helplessness of some sweet women when their affections are disappointed -- because all their teaching has been, that they can only delight in study of any kind for the sake of a personal love. They have never contemplated an independent delight in ideas as an experience which they could confess without being laughed at. Yet surely women need this defense against passionate affliction even more than men."
113. "With memory set smarting like a reopened wound, a man's past is not simply a dead history, an outworn preparation of the present: it is not a repented error shaken loose from the life: it is a still quivering part of himself, bringing shudders and bitter flavors and the tinglings of a merited shame."
114. "What do we live for; if it is not to make life less difficult to each other?"
115. "What quarrel, what harshness, what unbelief in each other can subsist in the presence of a great calamity, when all the artificial vesture of our life is gone, and we are all one with each other in primitive mortal needs?"
116. "What loneliness is more lonely than distrust?"
117. "What makes life dreary is the want of a motive."
118. "When we get to wishing a great deal for ourselves, whatever we get soon turns into mere limitation and exclusion."
119. “Women know no perfect love:
Loving the strong, they can forsake the strong;
Man clings because the being whom he loves
Is weak and needs him.”
120. "You have such strong words at command, that they make the smallest argument seem formidable."
121. "You may try but you can never imagine what it is to have a man's form of genius in you, and to suffer the slavery of being a girl."
