Surely it is not true blessedness to be free from sorrow, while there is sorrow and sin in the world: sorrow is then a part of love, and love does not seek to throw it off.
Some folks’ tongues are like the clocks as run on strikin’, not to tell you the time o’ the day, but because there’s summat wrong i’ their own inside.
Pity that consequences are determined not by excuses but by actions!
Our love at its highest flood rushes beyond its object, and loses itself in the sense of divine mystery.
Our deeds determine us, as much as we determine our deeds.
Our dead are never dead to us until we have forgotten them.
No story is the same to us after a lapse of time; or rather we who read it are no longer the same interpreters.
Love has a way of cheating itself consciously, like a child who plays at solitary hide-and-seek; it is pleased with assurances that it all the while disbelieves.
It is better sometimes not to follow great reformers of abuses beyond the threshold of their homes.
It cuts one sadly to see the grief of old people; they’ve no way of working it off; and the new spring brings no new shoots out on the withered tree.
Ingenious philosophers tell you, perhaps, that the great work of the steam-engine is to create leisure for mankind. Do not believe them: it only creates a vacuum for eager thought to rush in.
If you could make a pudding wi’ thinking o’ the batter, it ‘ud be easy getting dinner.
