Life began with waking up and loving my mother's face. - George Eliot

"It seems to me we can never give up longing and wishing while we are thoroughly alive. There are certain things we feel to be beautiful and good, and we must hunger after them."

"Only in the agony of parting do we look into the depths of love."

"What do we live for, if it is not to make life less difficult for each other?"

"It is never too late to be what you might have been."

"There is no despair so absolute as that which comes with the first moments of our first great sorrow, when we have not yet known what it is to have suffered and be healed, to have despaired and have recovered hope."