“There was no pride, pomp, or circumstance of glorious war in this poor, domestic strife, this seemingly sordid and unheroic, miserably unheroic, yet high, eternal contest!”

“What honest boy would pride himself on not picking pockets ? A thief who was trying to reform would. To be conceited of doing one's duty is then a sign of how little one does it, and how little one sees what a contemptible thing it is not to do it. Could any but a low creature be conceited of not being contemptible? Until our duty becomes to us common as breathing, we are poor creatures.”

“I would I were in the kingdom of heaven if it be as you and Mr. Graham take it for!" said Clementina."You must be in it, my lady, or you couldn't wish it to be such as it is.""Can one be in it and yet seem to himself to be out of it. Malcolm?""So many are out of it that seem to be in it, my lady, that one might well imagine it the other way around with some.”

“To will not from self, but with the Eternal, is to live.”

“It is as necessary for a poor man to give away, as for a rich man. Many poor men are more devoted worshipers of Mammon than some rich men.”

“Doubt may be a poor encouragement to do anything, but it is a bad reason for doing nothing.”

“I would rather be what God chose to make me than the most glorious creature that I could think of; for to have been thought about, born in God's thought, and then made by God, is the dearest, grandest and most precious thing in all thinking.”