“Your mother thought that as you and I, in a short time, have become, so to say, friends, and you have some confidence in me, I am in a position to give you good advice—and you would mind what I say.”

“I have thought since of the wonderful goodness of God to me in preserving me in the use of my reason and senses in that distressed time, that I did not use wicked and violent means to end my own miserable life.”

— Mary Rowlandson《Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson》

“The friend praying at her side was forgotten, the world had vanished, every law of reason was annihilated, all knowledge was out of her mind--every hard-won conquest of human empiricism was effaced.”

— Wilhelmine von Hillern《On the Cross: A Romance of the Passion Play at Oberammergau》

“The answer is, that we must do good to our seeming and real good friends, and evil to our seeming and real evil enemies--good to the good, evil to the evil.”

— Plato《The Republic of Plato》

“Several times, the thought had come to me, that the Things had, at last, left us; but, up to this time, I had refused to entertain the idea, seriously; now, however, I began to feel that there was reason for hope.”

— William Hope Hodgson《The House on the Borderland》

“A great desire to love and be friends, to love everybody, to be friends with everybody, seemed to be invading Lotty—a desire for sheer goodness.”

— Elizabeth von Arnim《The Enchanted April》

“And mind governs reason, and reason obeys mind; and mind is irremovable by fortune, cannot be taken away by informers, cannot be destroyed by disease, cannot have inroads made into it by old age.”

— Plutarch《Plutarch's Morals》

“I thought of Scudder, of the thousand friends I had lost, of the great seas of blood and the mountains of sorrow this man and his like had made for the world.”

— John Buchan《Mr. Standfast》

“But ere that time he had studied to good effect, and not books alone, but the world around him too, and the world within.”

— Dante Alighieri《The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri》

“Shut in and morbid as his life had been, Colin had more imagination than she had and at least he had spent a good deal of time looking at wonderful books and pictures.”

— Frances Hodgson Burnett《The Secret Garden》

“Truth to say, he was a conscientious man, and ever bore in mind the golden maxim, “Spare the rod and spoil the child.”

— Washington Irving《The Legend of Sleepy Hollow》

“DEAR DICK, At what time of life may a man think himself exempted from the necessity of sacrificing his repose to the punctilios of a contemptible world?”

— Tobias Smollett《The Expedition of Humphry Clinker》

“As for yourself, death shall come to you from the sea, and your life shall ebb away very gently when you are full of years and peace of mind, and your people shall bless you.”

— Homer《Odyssey》