... it is the greatest of all mistakes to begin life with the expectation that it is going to be easy, or with the wish to have it so. - Lucy Larcom

Every phase of our life belongs to us. The moon does not, except in appearance, lose her first thin, luminous curve, nor her silvery crescent, in rounding to her full. The woman is still both child and girl, in the completeness of womanly character. We have a right to our entire selves, through all the changes of this mortal state, a claim which we shall doubtless carry along with us into the unfolding mysteries of our eternal being. Perhaps in this thought lies hidden the secret of immortal youth: for a seer has said that "to grow old in heaven is to grow young."

Home-life, when one always stays at home, is necessarily narrowing. That is one reason why so many women are petty and unthoughtful of any except their own family's interests. We have hardly begun to live until we can take in the idea of the whole human family as the one to which we truly belong.

A part is greater than the whole; By hints are mysteries told. The fringes of eternity, — God's sweeping garment-fold, In that bright shred of glittering sea, I reach out for and hold.