85 quotes
It's astonishing what a lot of odd minutes one can catch during the day, if one really sets about it.
John Halifax, Gentleman (1856)
John held strongly the opinion that so solemn a festival as marriage is only desecrated by outward show.
John Halifax, Gentleman (1856)
I think a wife is bound to the very last to obey in all things not absolutely wrong, her husband's will.
John Halifax, Gentleman (1856)
One cannot make oneself, but one can sometimes help a little in the making of somebody else.
The Little Lame Prince and his Travelling Cloak (1875)
Half the sting of poverty is gone when one keeps house for one's own comfort and not for the comments of one's neighbours.
John Halifax, Gentleman (1856)
Those whose own light is quenched are often the light-bringers.
Sermons out of Church (1875)
A parent, unlike a poet, is not born, he is made.
Sermons out of Church (1875)
I have nothing to say against uncles in general. They are usually very excellent people, and very convenient to little boys and girls.
The Little Lame Prince and his Travelling Cloak (1875)
Oh, if I could live four weeks longer! but no matter, no matter!
I hold every man's faith so sacred, that no other man has a right to interfere with it, or to question it. The matter lies solely between himself and his Maker.
John Halifax, Gentleman (1856)
Lo! all life this truth declares!
Laborare est orare;
And the whole earth rings with prayers.
Poems (1859)
The world! It is a word capable of as diverse interpretations or misinterpretations as the thing itself — a thing by various people supposed to belong to heaven, man, or the devil, or alternatively to all three.
A Woman's Thoughts About Women (1858)
O Thou that openest, and no man shuts;
That shut'st, and no man opens — Thee we wait!
Thirty Years, Being Poems New and Old (1880)
I fear, the inevitable conclusion we must all come to is, that in the world happiness is quite indefinable. We can no more grasp it than we can grasp the sun in the sky or the moon in the water.
A Woman's Thoughts About Women (1858)
A finished life — a life which has made the best of all the materials granted to it, and through which, be its web dark or bright, its pattern clear or clouded, can now be traced plainly the hand of the Great Designer; surely this is worth living for?
A Woman's Thoughts About Women (1858)
The buttercups across the field
Made sunshine rifts of splendour.
Poems (1859)
Drink, my jolly lads, drink with discerning,
Wedlock's a lane where there is no turning;
Never was owl more blind than a lover,
Drink and be merry, lads, half seas over.
Thirty Years, Being Poems New and Old (1880)
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.
A Woman's Thoughts About Women (1858)
As we sail through life towards death,
Bound unto the same port—heaven,—
Friend, what years could us divide?
Nothing but a speck we seem
In the waste of waters round,
Floating, floating like a dream, —
Outward bound.
Thirty Years, Being Poems New and Old (1880)