Mary Augusta Ward

The only thing which can keep journalism alive—journalism, which is born of the moment, serves the moment, and, as a rule, dies with the moment—is—again, the Stevensonian secret!—charm.

I wanted to show how a man of sensitive and noble character, born for religion, comes to throw off the orthodoxies of his day and moment, and go out into the wilderness where all is experiment, and spiritual life begins again.

But no man has a monopoly of conscience.

But the mind travels far—and mysteriously—in sleep.

[T]he delight in natural things—colours, forms, scents—when there was nothing to restrain or hamper it, has often been a kind of intoxication, in which thought and consciousness seemed suspended.

A life spent largely among books, and in the exercise of a literary profession, has very obvious drawbacks, as a subject matter, when one comes to write about it.

Is there any other slavery and chain like that of temperament?

[T]he better life cannot be imposed from without—it must grow from within.

We enjoy the great prophets of literature most when we have not yet lived enough to realise all they tell us.

[M]y credo is very short. Its first article is art—and its second is art—and its third is art!

Customers must be delicately angled for at a safe distance—show yourself too much, and, like , they flashed away.

There is nothing more startling in human relations than the strong emotions of weak people.

To reconceive the Christ! It is the special task of our age.

Truth has never been, can never be, contained in any one creed or system!

All things change,—creeds and philosophies and outward systems,—but God remains!

Conviction is the Conscience of the Mind.

Other trades may fail. The agitator is always sure of his market.

Place before your eyes two precepts, and two only. One is, Preach the Gospel; and the other is—Put down enthusiasm! […] — the Church of England in a nutshell.

There is a tyrannical element in all fanaticism, an element which makes opposition a torment.

This Laodicean cant of tolerance.

One may as well preach a respectable mythology as anything else.

Every man is bound to leave a story better than he found it.

"Propinquity does it"—as Mrs Thornburgh is always reminding us.