“Perpetual devotion to what a man calls his business, is only to be sustained by perpetual neglect of many other things.”

“In his own life, then, a man is not to expect happiness, only to profit by it gladly when it shall arise; he is on duty here; he knows not how or why, and does not need to know; he knows not for what hire, and must not ask. Somehow or other, though he does not know what goodness is, he must try to be good; somehow or other, though he cannot tell what will do it, he must try to give happiness to others.”

“After all, I reflected, I was like my neighbours; and then I smiled, comparing myself with other men, comparing my active goodwill with the lazy cruelty of their neglect.”

“To be feared of a thing and yet to do it, is what makes the prettiest kind of a man.”

“In many ways an artistic nature unfits a man for a practical existence.”

“His past was fairly blameless; few men could read the rolls of their life with less apprehension; yet he was humbled to the dust by the many ill things he had done, and raised up again into sober and fearful gratitude by the many he had come so near to doing, yet avoided.”

“What seems a kind of temporal death to people choked between walls and curtains, is only a light and living slumber to the man who sleeps a-field.”