“Sane people did what their neighbors did, so that if any lunatics were at large, one might know and avoid them.”

“Sane people did what their neighbours did, so that if any lunatics were at large, one might know and avoid them.”

“The great safeguard of society and of domestic life was, that opinions were not acted on. Sane people did what their neighbors did, so that if any lunatics were at large, one might know and avoid them.”

“In books there were people who were always agreeable or tender, and delighted to do things that made one happy, and who did not show their kindness by finding fault. The world outside the books was not a happy one, Maggie felt: it seemed to be a world where people behaved the best to those they did not pretend to love and that did not belong to them. And if life had no love in it, what else was there for Maggie? Nothing but poverty and the companionship of her mother’s narrow griefs—perhaps of her father’s heart-cutting childish dependence. There is no hopelessness so sad as that of early youth, when the soul is made up of wants, and has no long memories, no super-added life in the life of others; though we who look on think lightly of such premature despair, as if our vision of the future lightened the blind sufferer’s present.”

“People glorify all sorts of bravery except the bravery they might show on behalf of their nearest neighbors.”

“We have all got to exert ourselves a little to keep sane, and call things by the same names as other people call them by.”

“But how little we know what would make paradise for our neighbors. We judge from our own desires, and our neighbors themselves are not always open enough even to throw out a hint of theirs.”