«Men are like the earth and we are the moon; we turn always one side to them, and they think there is no other, because they don't see it / but there is.»

«My feeling is that there is nothing in life but refraining from hurting others, and comforting those that are sad.»

«The troubles of the young are soon over; they leave no external mark. If you wound the tree in its youth the bark will quickly cover the gash; but when the tree is very old, peeling the bark off, and looking carefully, you will see the scar there still. All that is buried is not dead.»

«Everything has two sides - the outside that is ridiculous, and the inside that is solemn»

«There was never a great man who had not a great mother.»

«Perhaps the old monks were right when they tried to root love out; perhaps the poets are right when they try to water it. It is a blood-red flower, with the color of sin; but there is always the scent of a god about it.»

«A little weeping, a little wheedling, a little self-degradation, a little careful use of our advantages, and then some man will say ''.Come, be my wife!'' With good looks and youth marriage is easy to attain. There are men enough; but a woman who has sold herself, even for a ring and a new name, need hold her skirt aside for no creature in the street. They both earn their bread in one way. Marriage for love is the most beautiful external symbol of the union of souls; marriage without it is the least clean traffic that defiles the world.»

«We all enter the world little plastic beings, with so much natural force, perhaps, but for the rest / blank; and the world tells us what we are to be, and shapes us by the ends it sets before us. To you it says / Work; and to us it says / Seem! To you it says / As you approximate to man's highest ideal of God, as your arm is strong and your knowledge great, and the power to labor is with you, so you shall gain all that human heart desires. To us it says / Strength shall not help you, nor knowledge, nor labor. You shall gain what men gain, but by other means. And so the world makes men and women.»

«I have no conscience, none, but I would not like to bring a soul into this world. When it sinned and when it suffered something like a dead hand would fall on me, -- ''You did it, you, for your own pleasure you created this thing! See your work!'' If it lived to be eighty it would always hang like a millstone round my neck, have the right to demand good from me, and curse me for its sorrow. A parent is only like to God: if his work turns out bad so much the worse for him; he dare not wash his hands of it. Time and years can never bring the day when you can say to your child, ''Soul, what have I to do with you?''»

«No good work is ever done while the heart is hot and anxious and fretted»