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the sensible make their life pleasanter and more endurable by mitigating their sorrows with the consideration of their blessings, while most people, like sieves, let the worst things stick to them while the best pass through

as the strings of the bow and lyre are alternately tightened and relaxed, so is it with the order of the world; in human affairs there is nothing pure and without alloy

Let us cleanse therefore the fountain of contentedness, which is within us, that so external things may turn out for our good, through our putting the best face on them.

It also makes for contentedness, when things happen against our wish, not to overlook our many advantages and comforts, but by looking at both good and bad to feel that the good preponderate.

much of grief is blunted and relaxed when the body is permeated by calm, like the sea in fine weather

For life is immortal youthfulness, and it hates age that tries to clog its movements--age that belongs not to life in truth, but follows it as the shadow follows the lamp.

It is for our self to know that it must be born anew every moment of its life.

Only love is motion and rest in one.

A hopeless feeling descends on one and is hard to fight off.

Well, it is something to have got here, and the wind may be our friend to-morrow.

One can only say 'God help us!' and plod on our weary way, cold and very miserable, though outwardly cheerful.

We are weak, writing is difficult, but for my own sake I do not regret this journey, which has shown that Englishmen can endure hardships, help one another, and meet death with as great a fortitude as ever in the past.

We took risks, we knew we took them; things have come out against us, and therefore we have no cause for complaint, but bow to the will of Providence, determined still to do our best to the last.

Amongst ourselves we are unendingly cheerful, but what each man feels in his heart I can only guess.

We shall stick it out to the end, but we are getting weaker, of course, and the end cannot be far.

Let it be enough for faith, that the whole creation groans in mortal frailty, strives with unconquerable constancy: Surely not all in vain.

There is indeed one element in human destiny that not blindness itself can controvert: whatever else we are intended to do, we are not intended to succeed; failure is the fate allotted.

There is no cutting of the Gordian knots of life; each must be smilingly unravelled.

Noble disappointment, noble self-denial, are not to be admired, not even to be pardoned, if they bring bitterness.

Our frailties are invincible, our virtues barren; the battle goes sore against us to the going down of the sun.

It may consist with perpetual failure, and find exercise in the continued chase.

Even grief, that passion to which the virtuous and tender mind is particularly subject, will be obviated or alleviated by the same thoughts.

Evil is uncertain in the same degree as good, and for the reason that we ought not to hope too securely, we ought not to fear with too much dejection.

Sorrow is a kind of rust of the soul, which every new idea contributes in its passage to scour away.

Native deformity cannot be rectified, a dead friend cannot return, and the hours of youth trifled away in folly, or lost in sickness, cannot be restored.