Renunciation remains sorrow, though a sorrow borne willingly.

Action

Human beings must have action; and they will make it if they cannot find it.

Age and Aging

Few women, I fear, have had such reason as I have to think the long sad years of youth were worth living for the sake of middle age.

Appearance

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

Belief

Human beliefs, like all other natural growths, elude the barrier of systems.

Careers

He was at a starting point which makes many a man's career a fine subject for betting, if there were any gentlemen given to that amusement who could appreciate the complicated probabilities of an arduous purpose, with all the possible thwartings and furtherings of circumstance, all the niceties of inward balance, by which a man swings and makes his point or else is carried headlong.

Compassion

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

Conquest

The desire to conquer is itself a sort of subjection.

Death and Dying

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

Deeds and Good Deeds

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

Disasters

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?

Education

Those who trust us educate us.

Evil

One soweth and another reapeth is a verity that applies to evil as well as good.

Experience

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

Failure

The only failure one should fear, is not hugging to the purpose they see as best.

Fools and Foolishness

In the vain laughter of folly wisdom hears half its applause.

Friends and Friendship

Friendships begin with liking or gratitude roots that can be pulled up.

Getting Ahead

It's them as take advantage that get advantage I this world.

Grief

She was no longer wrestling with the grief, but could sit down with it as a lasting companion and make it a sharer in her thoughts.

Ideas

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

Influence

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

Integrity

Keep true, never be ashamed of doing right; decide on what you think is right and stick to it.

Language

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

Life and Living

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.

Love Ended

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.

Men

Men's men: gentle or simple, they're much of a muchness.

Men and Women

I tell you there isn't a thing under the sun that needs to be done at all, but what a man can do better than a woman, unless it's bearing children, and they do that in a poor make-shift way; it had better ha been left to the men.

Motives

Every woman is supposed to have the same set of motives, or else to be a monster.

Opposition

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.

Passion

Our passions do not live apart in locked chambers but dress 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.

Perspective

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.

Portraits

Sir Joshua would have been glad to take her portrait; and he would have had an easier task than the historian at least in this, that he would not have had to represent the truth of change --only to give stability to one beautiful moment.

Professions and Professionals

The best augury of a man's success in his profession is that he thinks it the finest in the world.

Purpose

What makes life dreary is the want of a motive.

Reality

We must find our duties in what comes to us, not in what might have been.

Sarcasm

Blows are sarcasm's turned stupid.

Silence

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.

Sympathy

Sympathetic people often don't communicate well, they back reflected images which hide their own depths.

Thoughts and Thinking

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.

Wit

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

Women

A woman's heart must be of such a size and no larger, else it must be pressed small, like Chinese feet; her happiness is to be made as cakes are, by a fixed receipt.