What makes life dreary is want of motive.
It seems to me we can never give up longing and wishing while we are alive. There are certain things we feel to be beautiful and good, and we must hunger for them.
Music sweeps by me as a messenger carrying a message that is not for me.
An ass may bray a good while before he shakes the stars down.
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.
The desire to conquer is itself a sort of subjection.
Blessed is the man who, having nothing to say, abstains from giving wordy evidence of the fact.
Speech may be barren; but it is ridiculous to suppose that silence is always brooding on a nestful of eggs.
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 mind. But the realm of silence is large enough beyond the grave. This is the world of light and speech, and I shall take leave to tell you that you are very dear.
What greater thing is there for two human souls, than to feel that they are joined for life--to strengthen each other in all labor, 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?
Poor fellow! I think he is in love with you.' I am not aware of it. And to me it is one of the most odious things in a girl's life, that there must always be some supposition of falling in love coming between her and any man who is kind to her... I have no ground for the nonsensical vanity of fancying everybody who comes near me is in love with me.
Only in the agony of parting do we look into the depths of love.
Life seems to go on without effort when I am filled with music.
But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric 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.
The progress of the world can certainly never come at all save by the modified action of the individual beings who compose the world.
People are almost always better than their neighbors think they are.
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.
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 a very hard thing 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.
Upon my word, I think the truth is the hardest missile one can be pelted with.
She was no longer struggling against the perception of facts, but adjusting herself to their clearest perception.