More helpful than all wisdom is one draught of simple human pity that will not forsake us.
But human experience is usually paradoxical, that means incongruous with the phrases of current talk or even current philosophy.
In all private quarrels the duller nature is triumphant by reason of dullness.
An election is coming. Universal peace is declared, and the foxes have a sincere interest in prolonging the lives of the poultry.
The sons of Judah have to choose that God may again choose them. The divine principle of our race is action, choice, resolved memory.
The reward of one duty is the power to fulfill another.
It will never rain roses: when we want to have more roses we must plant more trees.
Truth has rough flavours if we bite it through.
No story is the same to us after a lapse of time or rather we who read it are no longer the same interpreters.
Our deeds still travel with us from afar, and what we have been makes us what we are.
There are many victories worse than a defeat.
Life began with waking up and loving my mother's face.
When death, the great reconciler, has come, it is never our tenderness that we repent of, but our severity.
And when a woman's will is as strong as the man's who wants to govern her, half her strength must be concealment.
I desire no future that will break the ties with the past.
Anger and jealousy can no more bear to lose sight of their objects than love.
In the vain laughter of folly wisdom hears half its applause.
We hand folks over to God's mercy, and show none ourselves.
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.
All the learnin' my father paid for was a bit o' birch at one end and an alphabet at the other.
Wear a smile and have friends wear a scowl and have wrinkles.
The best augury of a man's success in his profession is that he thinks it the finest in the world.
I like not only to be loved, but also to be told I am loved.
Different taste in jokes is a great strain on the affections.
Genius at first is little more than a great capacity for receiving discipline.
Whether happiness may come or not, one should try and prepare one's self to do without it.
There is only one failure in life possible, and that is not to be true to the best one knows.
Our dead are never dead to us, until we have forgotten them.
In every parting there is an image of death.
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.
In spite of his practical ability, some of his experience had petrified into maxims and quotations.
You should read history and look at ostracism, persecution, martyrdom, and that kind of thing. They always happen to the best men, you know.
Failure after long perseverance is much grander than never to have a striving good enough to be called a failure.
When we get to wishing a great deal for ourselves, whatever we get soon turns into mere limitation and exclusion.
A difference of taste in jokes is a great strain on the affections.
Jealousy is never satisfied with anything short of an omniscience that would detect the subtlest fold of the heart.
But what we call our despair is often only the painful eagerness of unfed hope.
Little children are still the symbol of the eternal marriage between love and duty.
Great things are not done by impulse, but by a series of small things brought together.
Animals are such agreeable friends - they ask no questions they pass no criticisms.
Falsehood is easy, truth so difficult.
No great deed is done by falterers who ask for certainty.
Knowledge slowly builds up what Ignorance in an hour pulls down.
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.
The only failure one should fear, is not hugging to the purpose they see as best.
Blessed is the influence of one true, loving human soul on another.
When death comes it is never our tenderness that we repent from, but our severity.
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.