“Life, struggle, even amidst pain and blood and poverty, seemed beautiful.”

“The life of a Christian is nothing but a perpetual struggle against self; there is no flowering of the soul to the beauty of its perfection except at the price of pain”

“Certainly the determining acts of her life were not ideally beautiful. They were the mixed result of young and novel impulse struggling amidst the conditions of an imperfect social state, in which great feelings will often take the aspect of error, and great faith the aspect of illusion.”

“[B]etter the beauty of struggle and futility than the illusion of accomplishment; for as we struggle, he would seem to say, so are we beautiful.”

“His own life seemed so solitary, a fragile column supporting nothing amidst the wreckage of the years.”

“If life's not beautiful without the pain,well I'd just rather never ever even see beauty again.”