What destroys us most effectively is not a malign fate but our own capacity for self-deception and for degrading our own best self. - George Eliot

It is better - it shall be better with me because I have known you.

She was perfectly quiet now, but not asleep — only soothed by sweet porridge and warmth into that wide-gazing calm which makes us older human beings, with our inward turmoil, feel a certain awe in the presence of a little child, such as we feel before some quiet majesty or beauty in the earth or sky — before a steady glowing planet, or a full-flowered eglantine, or the bending trees over a silent pathway.

New voices come to me where'er I roam, My heart too widens with its widening home: But song grows weaker, and the heart must break For lack of voice, or fingers that can wake The lyre's full answer; nay, its chords were all Too few to meet the growing spirit's call. The former songs seem little, yet no more Can soul, hand, voice, with interchanging lore Tell what the earth is saying unto me: The secret is too great, I hear confusedly.