"Our natures own predilections and antipathies alike strange. There are people from whom we secretly shrink, whom we would personally avoid, though reason confesses that they are good people: there are others with faults of temper, &c., evident enough, beside whom we live content, as if the air about them did us good."
"In catalepsy and a dead trance, I studiously held the quick of my nature."
"Happiness is the cure—a cheerful mind the preventive: cultivate both."
"~Do you like him much?~I told you I like him a little. Where is the use of caring for him so very much? He is full of faults.~Is he?~All boys are.~More than girls?~Very likely. Wise people say it is folly to think anyboy perfect, and as to likes and diskiles, we should be friendly to all, and worship none."
"For once a hope was realized. I held in my hand a morsel of real solid joy: not a dream, not an image of the brain, not one of those shadowy chances imagination pictures, and on which humanity starves but cannot live"
"Dr. John, throughout his whole life, was a man of luck - a man of success. And why? Because he had the eye to see his opportunity, the heart to prompt to well-timed action, the nerve to consummate a perfect work. And no tyrant-passion dragged him back; no enthusiasms, no foibles encumbered his way."
"The spring which moved my energies lay far away beyond seas, in an Indian isle."
"The charm of variety there was not, nor the excitement of incident; but I liked peace so well, and sought stimulus so little, that when the latter came I almost felt it a disturbance, and rather still wished it had held aloof."
"Besides, I seemed to hold two lives—the life of thought, and that of reality; and, provided the former was nourished with a sufficiency of the strange necromantic joys of fancy, the privileges of the latter might remain limited to daily bread, hourly work, and a roof of shelter."
"Where the bodily presence is weak and the speech contemptible, surely there cannot be error in making written language the medium of better utterance than faltering lips can achieve?"
". . . if there was a hope of comfort for any moment, the heart or head of no human being in this house could yield it . . ."
"Silence is of different kinds, and breathes different meanings."
"I doubt if I have made the best use of all my calamities. Soft, amiable natures they would have refined to saintliness; of strong, evil spirits they would have made demons; as for me, I have only been a woe-struck and selfish woman."
"This little man was of the order of beings who must not be opposed, unless you possessed an all-dominant force sufficient to crush him at once."
"I had wanted to compromise with Fate: to escape occasional great agonies by submitting to a whole life of privation and small pains."
"I wait, with some impatience in my pulse, but no doubt in my breast."
"This pure little drop from a pure little source was too sweet: it penetrated deep, and subdued the heart"
"Entering by the carré, a piece of mirror- glass, set in an oaken cabinet, repeated my image. It said I was changed: my cheeks and lips were sodden white, my eyes were glassy, and my eyelids swollen and purple.On rejoining my companions, I knew they all looked at me - my heart seemed discovered to them: I believed myself self-betrayed. Hideously certain did it seem that the very youngest of the school must guess why and for whom I despaired."
"There are certain natures of which the mutual influence is such, that the more they say, the more they have to say. For these out of association grows adhesion, and out of adhesion, amalgamation."
"I thought I loved him when he went away; I love him now in another degree: he is more my own. [ . . . ] Oh! a thousand weepers, praying in agony on waiting shores, listened for that voice, but it was not uttered--not uttered till; when the hush came, some could not feel it: till, when the sun returned, his light was night to some!"
"Your dress is thin, you have been dancing, you are heated." "Always preaching," retorted she; "always coddling and admonishing." The answer Dr. John would have given did not come; that his heart was hurt became evident in his eye; darkened, and saddened, and pained, he turned a little aside, but was patient."
"Once I saw Graham - wholly unconscious of her proximity - push her with his restless foot. She receded an inch or two. A minute after one little hand stole out from beneath her face, to which it had been pressed, and softly caressed the heedless foot."
"My heart almost died within me; miserable longings strained its chords. How long were the September days! How silent, how lifeless!"
"The world, I soon learned, held a different estimate: and I make no doubt, the world is very right in its view, yet believe also that I am not quite wrong in mine."
"Of an artistic temperament, I deny that I am; yet I must possess something of the artist's faculty of making the most of present pleasure."