Quote collection
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"Ingenious philosophers tell you, perhaps, that the great work of the steam-engine is to create leisure for mankind. Do not believe them; it only creates a vacuum for eager thought to rush in."
"Don't seem to he on the lookout for crows, else you'll set other people watching."
"Awful Night! Ancestral mystery of mysteries."
"A proud heart and a lofty mountain are never fruitful."
"I think I am quite wicked with roses. I like to gather them, and smell them till they have no scent left."
"O the anguish of the thought that we can never atone to our dead for the stinted affection we gave them."
"You youngsters nowadays think you're to begin with living well and working easy; you've no notion of running afoot before you get on horseback."
"We cannot reform our forefathers."
"It's no trifle at her time at her time of life to part with a doctor who knows her constitution."
"It is a sad weakness in us, after all, that the thought of a man's death hallows him anew to us; as if life were not sacred too."
"We get a deal o' useless things about us, only because we've got the money to spend."
"the mysterious complexity of our life is not to be embraced by maxims ... to lace ourselves up in formulas of that sort is to repress all the divine promptings and inspirations that spring from growing insight and sympathy."
"There's folks 'ud hold a sieve under the pump and expect to carry away the water."
"the Press has no band of critics who go the round of the churches and chapels, and are on the watch for a slip or defect in the preacher, to make a 'feature' in their article: the clergy are, practically, the most irresponsible of all talkers."
"Childhood is only the beautiful and happy time in contemplation and retrospect: to the child it is full of deep sorrows, the meaning of which is unknown."
"I think cheerfulness is a fortune in itself."
"autobiography at least saves a man or woman that the world is curious about from the publication of a string of mistakes called 'Memoirs."
"To superficial observers his chin had too vanishing an aspect, looking as if it were being gradually reabsorbed. And it did indeed cause him some difficulty about the fit of his satin stocks, for which chins were at that time useful."
"It is one thing to see your road, another to cut it."
"We reap what we sow, but nature has love over and above that justice, and gives us shadow and blossom and fruit, that spring from no planting of ours."