DINAH MARIA MULOCK

When faith and hope fail, as they do sometimes, we must try charity, which is love in action. We must speculate no more on our duty, but simply do it. When we have done it, however blindly, perhaps Heaven will show us why.

It is astonishing what a lot of odd minutes one can catch during the day, if one really sets about it.

An author departs, he does not die.

Oh the comfort, the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person, having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words, but pouring them all right out, just as they are.

How the sting of poverty, or small means, is gone when one keeps house for one's own comfort and not for the comfort of one's neighbors.

No virtue ever was founded on a lie. The truth, then, at all risks and costs - the truth from the beginning. Make a clean breast to whomsoever you need to make it, and then - face the world.

there is nothing so absolute as the tyranny of weakness.

To accept the inevitable; neither to struggle against it nor murmur at it-this is the great lesson of life.

One cannot make oneself, but one can sometimes help a little in the making of somebody else. It is well.

It is not work that kills, but "worry."

Better no marriage, than a marriage short of the best.

Happiness is not an end - it is only a means, and adjunct, a consequence. The Omnipotent Himself could never be supposed by any, save those who out of their own human selfishness construct the attributes of Divinity, to be absorbed throughout eternity in the contemplation of His own ineffable bliss, were it not identical with His ineffable goodness and love.

The plan of this world is infinite similarity and yet infinite variety.

The life of action is nobler than the life of thought.

What comfort there is in a cheerful spirit! how the heart leaps up to meet a sunshiny face, a merry tongue, an even temper, and a heart which either naturally, or, what is better, from conscientious principle, has learned to take all things on their bright side, believing that the Giver of life being all-perfect Love, the best offering we can make to Him is to enjoy to the full what He sends of good, and bear what He allows of evil!

A lost love. Deny it who will, ridicule it, treat it as mere imagination and sentiment, the thing is and will be; and women do suffer therefrom, in all its infinite varieties: loss by death, by faithlessness or unworthiness, and by mistaken or unrequited affection.

Action is the parent of results; dormancy, the brooding mother of discontent.

But oh! the blessing it is to have a friend to whom one can speak fearlessly on any subject; with whom one's deepest as well as one's most foolish thoughts come out simply and safely. Oh, the comfort - the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person - having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words, but pouring them all right out, just as they are, chaff and grain together; certain that a faithful hand will take and sift them, keep what is worth keeping, and then with the breath of kindness blow the rest away.

the worst times come to an end if you can only wait long enough.

About the greatest virtue a friend can have, is to be able to hold her tongue; and through this, like all virtues carried to extremity, may grow into a fault, and do great harm, still, it never can do so much harm as that horrible laxity and profligacy of speech which is a the root of half the quarrels, cruelties, and injustices of the world.

Be loving, and you will never want for love; be humble, and you will never want for guiding.

The wonder is not that some married people are less happy than they hoped to be, but that any married people, out of the honeymoon, or even in it, are ever happy at all.