Hostesses who entertain much must make up their parties as ministers make up their cabinets, on grounds other than personal liking.
Excessive literary production is a social offense.
When we get to wishing a great deal for ourselves, whatever we get soon turns into mere limitation and exclusion.
The only failure one should fear, is not hugging to the purpose they see as best.
Falsehood is easy, truth so difficult.
Little children are still the symbol of the eternal marriage between love and duty.
It is easy to say how we love new friends, and what we think of them, but words can never trace out all the fibers that knit us to the old.
The finest language is mostly made up of simple unimposing words.
The best augury of a man's success in his profession is that he thinks it the finest in the world.
Our words have wings, but fly not where we would.
The important work of moving the world forward does not wait to be done by perfect men.
Iteration, like friction, is likely to generate heat instead of progress.
It will never rain roses: when we want to have more roses we must plant more trees.
One must be poor to know the luxury of giving!
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.
Failure after long perseverance is much grander than never to have a striving good enough to be called a failure.
If we had a keen vision of all that is ordinary in human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow or the squirrel's heart beat, and we should die of that roar which is the other side of silence.
The happiest women, like the happiest nations, have no history.
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 have recovered hope.
No evil dooms us hopelessly except the evil we love, and desire to continue in, and make no effort to escape from.