The music throbbed in a voice of singular and delicate power; the air was resonant with melody, love and pain. The meanest Italian in the gallery far up beneath the ceiling, the most exalted of the land in the boxes and the stalls, leaned indulgently forward, to be swept by this sweet storm of song.

It must be remembered that the sea is a great breeder of friendship. Two men who have known each other for twenty years find that twenty days at sea bring them nearer than ever they were before, or else estrange them.

He knew the lie of silence to be as evil as the lie of speech.

She was beginning to understand that evil is not absolute, and that good is often an occasion more than a condition.

There is no refuge from memory and remorse in this world. The spirits of our foolish deeds haunt us, with or without repentance.

For when a child is born the mother also is born again.

It is not the broken heart that kills, but broken pride, monseigneur.

Imagination is at the root of much that passes for love.

There is no influence like the influence of habit.

It's the people who try to be clever who never are; the people who are clever never think of trying to be.

Love knows not distance; it hath no continent; it's eyes are for the stars.

In all secrets there is a kind of guilt, however beautiful or joyful they may be, or for what good end they may be set to serve. Secrecy means evasion, and evasion means a problem to the moral mind.

Man is born in a day, and he dies in a day, and the thing is easily over; but to have a sick heart for three-fourths of one's lifetime is simply to have death renewed every morning; and life at that price is not worth living.

Every man should have laws of his own, I should think; commandments of his own, for every man has a different set of circumstances wherein to work -- or worry.

The real business of life is trying to understand each other.

He came by a leap to the goal of purpose, not by the toilsome steps of reason. On the instant his headlong spirit declared his purpose: this was the one being for him in all the world: at this altar he would light a lamp of devotion, and keep it burning forever.

She belongs to a race of delightful women, who never do any harm, whom everybody calls good, and who are very severe on those who do not pretend to be good.

Memory is man's greatest friend and worst enemy.

But paying is part of the game of life: it is the joy of buying that we crave.

Every shot that kills ricochets.