More helpful than all wisdom is one draught of simple human pity that will not forsake us.
It is seldom that the miserable of the world can help regarding their misery as a wrong inflicted by those who are less miserable.
Best friend, my well-spring in the wilderness!
I have the conviction that excessive literary production is a social offence.
Marriage must be a relation either of sympathy or of conquest.
In the multitude of middle-aged men who go about their vocations in a daily course determined for them much in the same way as the tie of their cravats, there is always a good number who once meant to shape their own deeds and alter the world a little.
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.
You should read history and look at ostracism, persecution, martyrdom, and that kind of thing. They always happen to the best men, you know.
The important work of moving the world forward does not wait to be done by perfect men.
The best augury of a man’s success in his profession is that he thinks it the finest in the world.
We hand folks over to God’s mercy, and show none ourselves.
I think I should have no other mortal wants, if I could always have plenty of music. It seems to infuse strength into my limbs and ideas into my brain. Life seems to go on without effort, when I am filled with music.
What do we live for, if not to make life less difficult for each other?
It was not that she was out of temper, but that the world was not equal to the demands of her fine organism.
There are some cases in which the sense of injury breeds – not the will to inflict injuries and climb over them as a ladder, but – a hatred of all injury.
No soul is desolate as long as there is a human being for whom it can feel trust and reverence.
Might, could, would – they are contemptible auxiliaries.
Quarrel? Nonsense; we have not quarreled. If one is not to get into a rage sometimes, what is the good of being friends?
When one wanted one’s interests looking after whatever the cost, it was not so well for a lawyer to be over honest, else he might not be up to other people’s tricks.
In all private quarrels the duller nature is triumphant by reason of dullness.
But human experience is usually paradoxical, that means incongruous with the phrases of current talk or even current philosophy.
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