There is no sorrow under heaven which is, or ought to be, endless. To believe or to make it so, is an insult to Heaven itself. - Dinah Craik

The present only is a man's possession; the past is gone out of his hand, wholly, irrevocably. He may suffer from it, learn from it — in degree, perhaps, expiate it; but to brood over it is utter madness.

O, my son's my son till he gets him a wife, But my daughter's my daughter all her life.

This is practically the language used to fallen women, and chiefly by their own sex: "God may forgive you, but we never can!" — a declaration which, however common, in spirit if not in substance, is, when one comes to analyse it, unparalleled in its arrogance of blasphemy. That for a single offence, however grave, a whole life should be blasted, is a doctrine repugnant even to Nature's own dealings in the visible world.