"We often think we are of great importance to certain people; that they must be thinking of us and our affairs, that they watch our actions and shape their course accordingly. In general it is not so; we are quite mistaken."

"It would be very unlucky for cats if people in a body should discover how much more jolly it was to be out in the warm golden mist of moonlight, when all was so fresh and sweet, than tucked up in their heated bedrooms under the low ceiling that shuts out the stars."

"If we consider women whose lot it is to inspire deep affection, we shall sometimes find them, not those who can most generously bestow, but those who can most generously receive."

"In general, the woman bears the small misfortunes and continued disappointments of life best, and the man bears best the great ones."

"There can be little doubt that it is the fools, and not the wise, who govern the world. While the wise are considering, the fools act; while the wise investigate, the fools have made up their minds; by the time the wise have discovered, the fools have made arrangements, and the wise, for the sake of law and order, or, if not, for the sake of peace and quietness, are obliged to give way."

"The first feeling drew him to her side; all nature seemed to smile so on her sweetness. She reminded him, in that secluded spot, of a fair lily shaded by its own green leaf. And then the second feeling came like a smart box on the ear. He did not like to be so suddenly overcome.[…] So […] he went on and made the circuit of the garden. But that caused no difference, of course. Amabel, not being present, was only the more there. She was everywhere. The young growing things about him were lovely, for they were like her. The old steadfast trees were interesting, as in contrast to her. And here was the donkey! The very donkey was interesting, because she often tried in vain to make him go."

"[H]e could not escape thinking of her, being the slave for the moment of every pretty girl. Good young men generally are."

"[H]e was a graduate in nature's university. Nature is wiser than the schoolmaster; she educates but she never crams. Her scholars do not go up to take their degrees; their degrees come to them."

"Every right and natural responsibility of which you relieve a man, taking it on yourself, makes him less able to bear those responsibilities that nothing can relieve him of. If you could take all his duties from him, as we sometimes do, it would only make it certain that he would not then even do his duty by himself."

"There is nothing like action to show a man what he really is.[…] Till the decisive moment came he had not perhaps the remotest suspicion that he cared for human life in the abstract; and here he stands dripping, having risked his own to save that of an absolute stranger. He perceives the awful and mysterious oneness of humanity, how it draws the units to the whole. He is not independent, as he may have thought; he is part of all."

"The human mind is always inexorable in demanding a motive for all human actions. It is only himself that each man permits to act without one, and avails himself of the privilege with astonishing frequency."

"Divine Love came down to take on itself our sins, but there is no Saviour to do the like for our mistakes."

"[W]e wish for more in life, rather than for more of it."

"What a bore it is […] that the dull and uneducated and unimaginative should possess a dogged contempt for danger, and a kind of stupid fearlessness that we are never to have. I do not see how a highly imaginative man can have much animal courage."

"A great many people think of religion as if it was a game that they had to play with an August Opponent—a game at which both could not win, and yet they actually think they can play it unfairly. They want to cheat. But in that grand and awful game, it cannot be said that either wins unless both do."

"I do not know why a girl should be expected to talk well till she is at least twenty. There cannot be much in her, she may be prettily exacting, or charmingly modest, but her attractions must be personal, not intellectual."

"O sleep, we are beholden to thee, sleep, Thou bearest angels to us in the night, Saints out of heaven with palms. Seen by thy light Sorrow is some old tale that goeth not deep; Love is a pouting child."

"Reign, and keep life in this our deep desire— Our only greatness is that we aspire."

"How short our happy days appear! How long the sorrowful!"

"Work is its own best earthly need, Else have we none more than the sea-born throng Who wrought these marvellous isles that bloom afar."

"Like coral insects multitudinous The minutes are whereof our life is made. They build it up as in the deep's blue shade It grows, it comes to light, and then, and thus For both there is an end."

"I am glad to think I am not bound to make the wrong go right; But only to discover, and to do With cheerful heart, the work that God appoints."

"It is a comely fashion to be glad,— Joy is the grace we say to God."

"When our thoughts are born, Though they be good and humble, one should mind How they are reared, or some will go astray And shame their mother."

"Learn that to love is the one way to know, Or God or man: it is not love received That maketh man to know the inner life Of them that love him; his own love bestowed Shall do it."

"Man is the miracle in nature. God Is the One Miracle to man. Behold, "There is a God," thou sayest. Thou sayest well: In that thou sayest all. To Be is more Of wonderful, than being, to have wrought, Or reigned, or rested."

"To bear, to nurse, to rear, To watch and then to lose: To see my bright ones disappear, Drawn up like morning dews."

"Man dwells apart, though not alone, He walks among his peers unread; The best of thoughts which he hath known, For lack of listeners are not said."

"And sweeter woman ne'er drew breath Than my sonne's wife, Elizabeth."

"The while He sits whose name is Love, And waits, as Noah did, for the dove, To wit if she would fly to him.He waits for us, while, houseless things, We beat about with bruised wings On the dark floods and water-springs, The ruined world, the desolate sea; With open windows from the prime All night, all day, He waits sublime, Until the fulness of the time Decreed from His eternity."

"Is there never a chink in the world above Where they listen for words from below?"

"Let me be only sure; for sooth to tell The sorest dole is doubt."

"But two are walking apart forever And wave their hands for a mute farewell."

"Crowds of bees are giddy with clover Crowds of grasshoppers skip at our feet, Crowds of larks at their matins hang over, Thanking the Lord for a life so sweet."

"There is nothing so unreasonable as infancy, excepting the maturer stages of life."

"Emily had not one of those poverty-stricken natures which are never glad excepting for some special reason drawing them above themselves. She was naturally joyous and happy, unless under the pressure of an active sorrow that shaded her sky and quenched her sunshine. She lived in an elevated region full of love and wonder, taking kindly alike to reverence and to hope; but she was seldom excited, her feelings were not shallow enough to be easily troubled with excitement, or made fitful with agitation."

"Is it what we impart, or impute to nature from ourselves, that we chiefly lean upon? or does she truly impart of what is really in her to us?"

"I'm like a good clock," said Crayshaw, "I neither gain nor lose. I can strike, too."

"The most joyous and gladsome natures are often most keenly alive to impressions of reverence, and wonder, and awe. Emily's mind longed and craved to annex itself to all things fervent, deep, and real. As she walked on the common grass, she thought the better of it because the feet of Christ had trodden it also."

"It would be hard to say of any man that he is never right. If he is always thinking that he has forgotten a certain lady, surely he is right sometimes."

"A thing that is very unexpected and moderately strange, we meet with wide-opened eyes, with a start and perhaps exclamations; but a thing more than strange, utterly unaccounted for, quite unreasonable, and the last thing one could have supposed possible as coming from the person who demanded it, is met in far quieter fashion."

"Nature, before it has been touched by man, is almost always beautiful, strong, and cheerful in man's eyes; but nature, when he has once given it his culture and then forsaken it, has usually an air of sorrow and helplessness. He has made it live the more by laying his hand upon it, and touching it with his life. It has come to relish of his humanity, and it is so flavoured with his thoughts, and ordered and permeated by his spirit, that if the stimulus of his presence is withdrawn it cannot for a long while do without him, and live for itself as fully and as well as it did before."

"It seemed proper indeed to crowd the pages with children, for in real life they run all over; the world is covered thickly with the prints of their little footsteps, though, as a rule, books written for grown-up people are kept almost clear of them."

"I have lived to thank God that all my prayers have not been answered."

"Our own faces, seen suddenly, will sometimes tell us things concerning ourselves that we did not suspect before."

"[O]ne must have a certain amount of both intelligence and knowledge to be amazed even at the most extraordinary things."

"[T]his is a woman-ridden age. Yet it is but fair to confess that all the former ones were man-ridden ages. What we want is a happy proportion."

"[U]gliness of the right sort is a kind of beauty. It has some of the best qualities of beauty—it attracts observation and fixes the memory."

"Perhaps, if you knew you were going to die, your senses crammed in as much detail as they could while they still had the chance..."

""I don't mind authority, but not authoritarian authority. After all, the bus driver is allowed to be the boss of the bus. But if he's bad at driving, he's not going to be a bus driver anymore." Interview with Cory Doctorow"