An Ambitious Man

Love which rises from the grave to comfort us, possesses more of the

demons' than the angels' power. It terrifies us with its

supernatural qualities and deprives us temporarily of our reason.

Suppressed steam and suppressed emotion are dangerous things to deal

with.

The infant who wants its mother's breast, and the woman who wants her

lover's arms, are poor subjects to reason with. Though you tell the

former that fever has poisoned the mother's milk, or the latter that

destruction lies in the lover's embrace, one heeds you no more than

the other.

The accumulated knowledge of ages is sometimes revealed by a kiss.

Where wisdom is bliss, it is folly to be ignorant.

Some of us have to crucify our hearts before we find our souls.

A woman cannot fully know charity until she has met passion; but too

intimate an acquaintance with the latter destroys her appreciation of

all the virtues.

To feel temptation and resist it, renders us liberal in our judgment

of all our kind. To yield to it, fills us with suspicion of all.

There is an ecstatic note in pain which is never reached in

happiness.

The death of a great passion is a terrible thing, unless the dawn of

a greater truth shines on the grave.

Love ought to have no past tense.

Love partakes of the feline nature. It has nine lives.

It seems to be difficult for some of us to distinguish between

looseness of views, and charitable judgments. To be sorry for

people's sins and follies and to refuse harsh criticism is right; to

accept them as a matter of course is wrong.

Love and sorrow are twins, and knowledge is their nurse.

The pathway of the soul is not a steady ascent, but hilly and broken.

We must sometimes go lower, in order to get higher.

That which is to-day, and will be to-morrow, must have been

yesterday. I know that I live, I believe that I shall live again,

and have lived before.

Earth life is the middle rung of a long ladder which we climb in the

dark. Though we cannot see the steps below, or above, they exist all

the same.

The materialist denying spirit is like the burr of the chestnut

denying the meat within.

The inevitable is always right.

Prayer is a skeleton key that opens unexpected doors. We may not

find the things we came to seek, but we find other treasures.

The pessimist belongs to God's misfit counter.

Art, when divorced from Religion, always becomes a wanton.

To forget benefits we have received is a crime. To remember benefits

we have bestowed is a greater one.