“We never know how we love til we try to unlove!”

“Once in an age God sends to some of us a friend who loves in us, not a false-imagining, an unreal character, but looking through the rubbish of our imperfections, loves in us the divine ideal of our nature,--loves, not the man that we are, but the angel that we may be.”

“I am speaking now of the highest duty we owe our friends, the noblest, the most sacred--that of keeping their own nobleness, goodness, pure and incorrupt...If we let our friend become cold and selfish and exacting without remonstrance, we are no true lover, no true friend.”

“The truth is the kindest thing we can give folks in the end.”

“For how imperiously, how coolly, in disregard of all one’s feelings, does the hard, cold, uninteresting course of daily realities move on! Still we must eat, and drink, and sleep, and wake again, - still bargain, buy, sell, ask and answer questions, - pursue, in short, a thousand shadows, though all interest in them be over; the cold, mechanical habit of living remaining, after all vital interest in it has fled.”

“Death! Strange that there should be such a word, and such a thing, and we ever forget it; that one should be living, warm and beautiful, full of hopes, desires and wants, one day, and the next be gone, utterly gone, and forever!”

“When winds are raging o'er the upper ocean,And billows wild contend with angry roar,'Tis said, far down beneath the wild commotion,That peaceful stillness reigneth evermore. Far, far beneath, the noise of tempest dieth,And silver waves chime ever peacefully,And no rude storm, how fierce soe'er it flieth,Disturbs the Sabbath of that deeper sea. So to the heart that knows Thy love, O Purest,There is a temple sacred evermore,And all the babble of life's angry voicesDies in hushed silence at its peaceful door. Far, far away, the roar of passion dieth,And loving thoughts rise calm and peacefully,And no rude storm, how fierce soe'er it flieth,Disturbs the soul that dwells, O Lord, in Thee.”