“It is the favourite stratagem of our passions to sham a retreat, and to turn sharp round upon us at the moment we have made up our minds that the day is our own.”

“It is the moment when our resolution seems about to become irrevocable - when the fatal iron gates are about to close upon us - that tests our strength. Then, after hours of clear reasoning and firm conviction, we snatch at any sophistry that will nullify our long struggles, and bring us the defeat that we love better than victory.”

“We are poor plants buoyed up by the air-vessels of our own conceit: alas for us, if we get a few pinches that empty us of that windy self-subsistence.”

“We are contented with our day when we have been able to bear our grief in silence, and act as if we were not suffering.”

“Our dead are never dead to us until we have forgotten them: they can be injured by us, they can be wounded; theyknow all our penitence, all our aching sense that their place is empty, all the kisses we bestow on the smallest relic of their presence.”

“What destroys us most effectively is not a malign fate but our own capacity for self-deception and for degrading our own best self.”

“Our deeds determine us, as much as we determine our deeds.”