When death, the great Reconciler, has come, it is never our tenderness that we repent of, but our severity.
What greater thing is there for two human souls than to feel that they are joined for life – to strengthen each other in all labour, to rest on each other in all sorrow, to minister to each other in all pain, to be one with each other in silent unspeakable memories at the moment of the last parting?
Well, well, my boy, if good-luck knocks at your door, don’t you put your head out at window and tell it to be gone about its business, that’s all.
We hand folks over to God’s mercy, and show none ourselves.
Uncomfortable thoughts must be got rid of by good intentions for the future.
There’s no real making amends in this world, any more than you can mend a wrong subtraction by doing your addition right.
There’s no pleasure i’ living, if you’re to be corked up for ever, and only dribble your mind out by the sly, like a leaky barrel.
There’s many a good bit o’ work done with a sad heart.
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 to have recovered hope.
The first sense of mutual love excludes other feelings; it will have the soul all to itself.
The finest language is chiefly made up of unimposing words.
That’s what a man wants in a wife, mostly; he wants to make sure o’ one fool as ‘ull tell him he’s wise.
