The select natures who pant after the ideal, and find nothing in pantaloons or petticoats great enough to command their reverence and love, are curiously in unison with the narrowest and pettiest.

What destroys us most effectively is not a malign fate but our own capacity for self-deception and for degrading our own best self.

Her little butterfly soul fluttered incessantly between memory and dubious expectation.

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.

It's easy finding reasons why other folks should be patient.

Her own misery filled her heart—there was no room in it for other people's sorrow.

She hates everything that is not what she longs for.

We are overhasty to speak as if God did not manifest himself by our silent feeling, and make his love felt through ours.

You must mind and not lower the Church in people's eyes by seeming to be frightened about it for such a little thing.

A woman may get to love by degrees—the best fire does not flare up the soonest.

A pretty building I'm making, without either bricks or timber. I'm up i' the garret a'ready, and haven't so much as dug the foundation.

Your wisdom decides your value, the size of the problems you can solve, the opportunities you create, and ultimately the level of success you experience.

yes, writing is mostly a dream, but angels visit in dreams

REASON, n. Propensitate of prejudice.

I don't have perfect pitch, but I have relative pitch. I'm glad I don't have perfect pitch because perfect pitch can drive you crazy.

If you live for the next world, you get this one in the deal; but if you live only for this world, you lose them both.

When all usefulness is over, when one is assured of an unavoidable and imminent death, it is the simplest of human rights to choose a quick and easy death in place of a slow and horrible one.

Because that's what narcissism is all about; looking in the mirror everyday and thinking 'Damn, I'd like to shag myself.'

Like billowing clouds, Like the incessant gurgle of the brook The longing of the spirit can never be stilled.

That's the whole story of my life: frustration. It's a chronic disease, and it's incurable.

Transforms old print To zigzag manuscript, and cheats the eyes Of gallery critics by a thousand arts.