Jean Ingelow

A man can sometimes hold his own with one woman, but never with two.

A man's world, but woman bides her time.

If one cannot have success, the next most agreeable thing is failure.

And we do want poetry for its beauty […] Yes, only for its beauty; for its moral power over us—its teaching, comforting, and elevating power all depend on its beauty.

We often think we are of great importance to certain people; that they must be thinking of us and our affairs, that they watch our actions and shape their course accordingly. In general it is not so; we are quite mistaken.

It would be very unlucky for cats if people in a body should discover how much more jolly it was to be out in the warm golden mist of moonlight, when all was so fresh and sweet, than tucked up in their heated bedrooms under the low ceiling …

If we consider women whose lot it is to inspire deep affection, we shall sometimes find them, not those who can most generously bestow, but those who can most generously receive.

In general, the woman bears the small misfortunes and continued disappointments of life best, and the man bears best the great ones.

There can be little doubt that it is the fools, and not the wise, who govern the world. While the wise are considering, the fools act; while the wise investigate, the fools have made up their minds; by the time the wise have discovered, …

[H]e could not escape thinking of her, being the slave for the moment of every pretty girl. Good young men generally are.

[H]e was a graduate in nature's university. Nature is wiser than the schoolmaster; she educates but she never crams. Her scholars do not go up to take their degrees; their degrees come to them.

Every right and natural responsibility of which you relieve a man, taking it on yourself, makes him less able to bear those responsibilities that nothing can relieve him of. If you could take all his duties from him, as we sometimes do, it …

The human mind is always inexorable in demanding a motive for all human actions. It is only himself that each man permits to act without one, and avails himself of the privilege with astonishing frequency.

Divine Love came down to take on itself our sins, but there is no Saviour to do the like for our mistakes.

There is nothing so unreasonable as infancy, excepting the maturer stages of life.

Is it what we impart, or impute to nature from ourselves, that we chiefly lean upon? or does she truly impart of what is really in her to us?

"I'm like a good clock," said Crayshaw, "I neither gain nor lose. I can strike, too."

The most joyous and gladsome natures are often most keenly alive to impressions of reverence, and wonder, and awe. Emily's mind longed and craved to annex itself to all things fervent, deep, and real. As she walked on the common grass, she …

It would be hard to say of any man that he is never right. If he is always thinking that he has forgotten a certain lady, surely he is right sometimes.

A thing that is very unexpected and moderately strange, we meet with wide-opened eyes, with a start and perhaps exclamations; but a thing more than strange, utterly unaccounted for, quite unreasonable, and the last thing one could have …

It seemed proper indeed to crowd the pages with children, for in real life they run all over; the world is covered thickly with the prints of their little footsteps, though, as a rule, books written for grown-up people are kept almost …

I have lived to thank God that all my prayers have not been answered.

Our own faces, seen suddenly, will sometimes tell us things concerning ourselves that we did not suspect before.

[O]ne must have a certain amount of both intelligence and knowledge to be amazed even at the most extraordinary things.