Saints and martyrs had never interested Maggie so much as sages and poets. - George Eliot

There is no despair so absolute as that which comes from the first moments of our first great sorrow when we have not yet known what it is to have suffered and healed, to have despaired and recovered hope.

Hurt, he'll never be hurt — he's made to hurt other people.

If a man means to be hard, let him keep in his saddle and speak from that height, above the level of pleading eyes, and with the command of a distant horizon.