“To live amidst general regard, though it be but the regard of working people, is like 'sitting in sunshine, calm and sweet': serene inward feelings bud and bloom under the ray.”

“(V)irtue, like sunshine, works its own sweet miracles”

“Rainy, gloomy, drab, sunless day.  There are times when hope seems entirely clouded over, when looking for the blessings in your circumstances feels like trying to catch a ray of sunshine from six feet under.”

“My smile did not seem to be working. I used to have a good one. Now I get the feeling people regard it as something I just drop over my face, like a page on a flip chart.”

“What people regard as vanity—leaving great works, having children, acting in such a way as to prevent one's name from being forgotten—I regard as the highest expression of human dignity.”

“Whenever she turned her steep focus to me, I felt the warmth that flowers must feel when they bloom through the snow, under the first concentrated rays of the sun.”