A woman's always younger than a man at equal years.
What is art but life upon the larger scale, the higher. When, graduating up in a spiral line of still expanding and ascending gyres, it pushes toward the intense significance of all things, hungry for the infinite?
The beautiful seems right by force of beauty, and the feeble wrong because of weakness.
Books, books, books had found the secret of a garret-room piled high with cases in my father's name; Piled high, packed large, --where, creeping in and out among the giant fossils of my past, like some small nimble mouse between the ribs of a mastodon, I nibbled here and there at this or that box, pulling through the gap, in heats of terror, haste, victorious joy, the first book first. And how I felt it beat under my pillow, in the morning's dark. An hour before the sun would let me read! My books!
Books succeed, and lives fail.
But the child's sob curses deeper in the silence than the strong man in his wrath!
The world's male chivalry has perished out, but women are knights-errant to the last; and, if Cervantes had been greater still, he had made his Don a Donna.
For 'Tis not in mere death that men die most.
What monster have we here? A great Deed at this hour of day? A great just deed -- and not for pay? Absurd -- or insincere?
The devil's most devilish when respectable.
At painful times, when composition is impossible and reading is not enough, grammars and dictionaries are excellent for distraction.
Girls blush, sometimes, because they are alive, half wishing they were dead to save the shame. The sudden blush devours them, neck and brow; They have drawn too near the fire of life, like gnats, and flare up bodily, wings and all. What then? Who's sorry for a gnat or girl?
Experience, like a pale musician, holds a dulcimer of patience in his hand.
If you desire faith, then you have faith enough.
What is genius but the power of expressing a new individuality?
Since when was genius found respectable?
We all have known good critics, who have stamped out poet's hopes; Good statesmen, who pulled ruin on the state; Good patriots, who, for a theory, risked a cause; Good kings, who disemboweled for a tax; Good Popes, who brought all good to jeopardy; Good Christians, who sat still in easy-chairs; And damned the general world for standing up. Now, may the good God pardon all good men!
This race is never grateful: from the first, One fills their cup at supper with pure wine, Which back they give at cross-time on a sponge, In bitter vinegar.
I tell you, hopeless grief is passionless.
The Greeks said grandly in their tragic phrase, Let no one be called happy till his death; to which I would add, Let no one, till his death be called unhappy.
How many desolate creatures on the earth have learnt the simple dues of fellowship and social comfort, in a hospital.
The works of women are symbolical. We sew, sew, prick our fingers, dull our sight, producing what? A pair of slippers, sir, to put on when you're weary -- or a stool. To stumble over and vex you... curse that stool! Or else at best, a cushion, where you lean and sleep, and dream of something we are not, but would be for your sake. Alas, alas! This hurts most, this... that, after all, we are paid the worth of our work, perhaps.
Who so loves believes the impossible.
How do I love thee? Let me count the ways. I love thee to the depth and breadth and height my soul can reach.
The man, most man, works best for men: and, if most man indeed, he gets his manhood plainest from his soul.
Women know the way to rear up children (to be just). They know a simple, merry, tender knack of tying sashes, fitting baby-shoes, and stringing pretty words that make no sense. And kissing full sense into empty words.
A good neighbor sometimes cuts your morning up to mince-meat of the very smallest talk, then helps to sugar her bohea at night with your reputation.
Hurt a fly! He would not for the world: he's pitiful to flies even. Sing, says he, and tease me still, if that's your way, poor insect.
Men get opinions as boys learn to spell by reiteration chiefly.
It is not merely the likeness which is precious... but the association and the sense of nearness involved in the thing... the fact of the very shadow of the person lying there fixed forever! It is the very sanctification of portraits I think -- and it is not at all monstrous in me to say that I would rather have such a memorial of one I dearly loved, than the noblest Artist's work ever produced.
God answers sharp and sudden on some prayers and thrust the thing we have prayed for in our face, like a gauntlet with a gift in it.
And lips say God be pitiful, who never said, God be praised.
Let no one till his death be called unhappy. Measure not the work until the day's out and the labor done.
Eve is a twofold mystery.
A woman cannot do the thing she ought, which means whatever perfect thing she can, in life, in art, in science, but she fears to let the perfect action take her part and rest there: she must prove what she can do before she does it, -- prate of woman's rights, of woman's mission, woman's function, till the men (who are prating, too, on their side) cry, A woman's function plainly is... to talk. Poor souls, they are very reasonably vexed!
Measure not the work until the day's out and the labor's done.
He, in his developed manhood, stood, a little sunburn by the glare of life.