A Woman of Yesterday

Tolerant plains, that suffer the sea and the rains and the sun, To spread and span like the catholic man who hath mightily won God out of knowledge and good out of infinite pain...

What went ye out into the wilderness for to see?... A man clothed in soft raiment? Behold, they which are gorgeously apparelled, and live delicately, are in kings’ courts.—_St....

For the most part people do not think at all. They have little phrases and formulas which stand in their minds for thoughts and opinions, and they repeat them parrotlike. Most o...

He who professeth to believe in one Almighty Creator, and in his Son Jesus Christ, and is yet more intent on the honours, profits, and friendships of the world than he is, in si...

O Joy, hast thou a shape? Hast thou a breath? How fillest thou the soundless air? Tell me the pillars of thy house! What rest they on? Do they escape The victory of Death? —H. H.

“Lo, fool,” he said, “ye talk Fool’s treason; is the king thy brother fool?” Then little Dagonet clapt his hands and shrill’d, “Ay, ay, my brother fool, the king of fools! Conce...

She sitteth in a silence of her own; Behind her, on the ground, a red rose lies; Her thinking brow is bent, nor doth arise Her gaze from that shut book whose word unknown Her fi...

That which has caused the miserable failure of all the efforts of natural religion is that its founders have not had the courage to lay hold upon the hearts of men, consenting t...

There is a time when religion is only felt as a bridle that checks us, and then comes another time when it is a sweet and penetrating life-blood, which sets in motion every fibr...

When the soul, growing clearer, Sees God no nearer; When the soul, mounting higher, To God comes no nigher; But the arch-fiend Pride Mounts at her side, And, when she fain would...

Affections, Instincts, Principles, and Powers, Impulse and Reason, Freedom and Control— So men, unravelling God’s harmonious whole, Rend in a thousand shreds this life of ours....

Now die the dream, or come the wife, The past is not in vain, For wholly as it was your life Can never be again, My dear, Can never be again. —W. E. HENLEY.

Christianity has hitherto only partially, feebly, and waveringly taught its great doctrine. Christendom has not believed its own gospel. Forsaking the vital religion of Jesus, a...

Sin and hedgehogs are born without spikes, but how they wound and prick after their birth we all know. The most unhappy being is he who feels remorse before the deed, and brings...

“Was I selfish to ask you to come this long journey, just for me?” Keith asked anxiously, holding her hands. Anna found his hot and tremulous, and soothed them with a slow, stro...

Canst drink the waters of the crispèd spring? O sweet Content! Swim’st thou in wealth, yet sink’st in thine own tears? O Punishment! Then he that patiently Want’s burden bears N...

... I made answer to my friend: “Of a surety I have now set my feet on that point of life beyond the which he must not pass who would return.”

The evil base of our society eats right through; that our wealthy homes are founded on the spoliation of the poor vitiates all the life that goes on within them. Somehow or othe...

I said farewell; I stepped across the cracking earth and knew ’Twould yawn behind me. I must walk right on, ... Fate has carried me ’Mid the thick arrows; I will keep my stand,...

What’s this? For joy our hearts stand still, And life is loved and dear, The lost and found the cause hath crowned, The Day of Days is here. —WILLIAM MORRIS.

Look in my face; my name is Might-have-been; I am also called No-more, Too-late, Farewell; Unto thine ear I hold the dead sea-shell Cast up thy Life’s foam-fretted feet between;...

Nay, but I think the whisper crept Like growth through childhood. Work and play, Things common to the course of day, Awed thee with meanings unfulfill’d; And all through girlhoo...

Heaven’s gift takes earth’s abatement! He who smites the rock and spreads the water, Bidding drink and live a crowd beneath him, Even he, the minute makes immortal, Proves, perc...

Then fell thick rain, plume droopt and mantle clung, And pettish cries awoke, and the wan day Went glooming down in wet and weariness; But under her black brows a swarthy one La...

A small house in a small street of a small provincial city. A faded brown house with its front door directly on the street, the steps jutting into the sidewalk. A narrow strip o...

Are you the new person drawn toward me? To begin with take warning, I am surely far different from what you suppose; Do you suppose you will find in me your ideal?

Life! life! thou sea-fugue, writ from east to west, Love, Love alone can pore On thy dissolving score Of harsh half-phrasings, Blotted ere writ, And double erasings Of chords mo...

Which has not taught weak wills how much they can? Which has not fall’n on the dry heart like rain? Which has not cried to sunk, self-weary man: _Thou must be born again!_ —MATT...

I rise and raise my claspèd hands to Thee! Henceforth, the darkness hath no part in me, Thy sacrifice this day,— Abiding firm, and with a freeman’s might Stemming the waves of p...

This fact, and the compunction in Anna’s heart toward her early foe, had drawn the two girls together, and they became friends. They talked of the interests of the cause of reli...

My thwarted woman-thoughts have inward turned, And that vain milk like acid in me eats. Have I not in my thought trained little feet To venture, and taught little lips to move U...

Thus Professor Ward, with a sardonic and yet discomfited smile, standing in the studio of his friend Pierce Everett, in Fulham. The room was in the disorder of a radical breakin...

One by one thou dost gather the scattered families out of the earthly light into the heavenly glory, from the distractions and strife and weariness of time to the peace of etern...

The Moving Finger writes; and having writ, Moves on: nor all your Piety nor Wit Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line, Nor all your Tears wash out a Word of it. —THE RUBAIYAT.

Use sin as it will use you; spare it not, for it will not spare you; it is your murderer and the murderer of the world: use it, therefore, as a murderer should be used. Kill it...

“May I look at your work?” he asked, approaching Everett’s easel. The younger man stood behind him with sensitive, changing colour, and something almost like trepidation in the...

She was a queen of noble Nature’s crowning, A smile of hers was like an act of grace; She had no winsome looks, no pretty frowning, Like daily beauties of the vulgar race; But,...

Perhaps the thought crossed Keith Burgess’s mind as he joined her in her father’s library that evening, after their return from Gregory’s lecture, that she would have been, as a...

Still her father had not spoken, but, sitting down on a chest, he had bent over the box, and had drawn from it one after the other the buried books, with a hand as gentle as if...

How true it is that our destinies are decided by nothings, and that a small imprudence helped by some insignificant accident, as an acorn is fertilized by a drop of rain, may ra...

O Holiest Truth! how have I lied to thee! I vow’d this day thy sacrifice to be; But I am dim ere night. Surely I made my prayer, and I did deem That I could keep in me thy morni...