“It is not by muscle, speed, or physical dexterity that great things are achieved, but by reflection, force of character, and judgment.”

“Great results, can be achieved with small forces.”

“There is a very great difference — is there not? — between the temporal and the eternal judgments, a very great difference between a man's reputation and a man's character, for reputation is what men think and say of us, while character is what God and the angels know of us.”

“What an experiment will give, to put a writer in the dark, ask her to stretch a character of the human kind with no physical characteristics attached? Will this character emerge with no prejudice in kind or one of a new kind, an organism cultured in the dark to what light may not reflect? Humanity absorbed or rudely deflected?”

“Ere yet the salt of most unrighteous tearsHad left the flushing of her gallèd eyes,She married. O, most wicked speed, to postWith such dexterity to incestuous sheets!”

“We probably read Shakespeare in the first place for his stories, afterwards for his characters. . . . To become intimate with Shakespeare in this way is a great enrichment of mind and instruction of conscience. Then, by degrees, as we go on reading this world-teacher, lines of insight and beauty take possession of us, and unconsciously mould our judgments of men and things and of the great issues of life.”