“Because we are replete with the same kind of life; our minds are set to the same strain, and exhaust each other.  I can be more to myself and others, if I go, you will enter mother’s sphere more completely in my absence, and thus shall we both be refreshed and strengthened.”

“I feel the truth of your words, and I am glad to know that your philosophy of life so fully accords with my own.”

“We have a superabundance of one quality of life in our home, and a change is absolutely requisite for our mental as well as for our physical well-being.  Absence from it, separation between us, a going out into new atmospheres, a social mingling with persons we do not daily come in contact with, will produce the most beneficial results.  This is what every family at times needs.  One great objection I have to our marriage system is, that as society is now constittuted, it allows no freedom to the individual.  The two are so exclusively together that they lose knowledge of themselves.  They suffer physically and intellectually.  On the other hand, if more freedom existed, if their lives took a broader scope, each would know each more perfectly, and absorb from others that vigor which would develop a natural growth of their own.  For my part, I can never submit to the existing rules of married life.”

“The analogies of the natural world to human life are good, for the rocky shore symbolizes the highest power of the human soul, which is endurance rather than action.  To most persons such characters seem vapid and sentimental, lacking force and tone, and generally unfitted for the enterprises of the world.  And yet there are forces in man beside the grappling and hammering manifestations of the day.  There is a greater mastery in control, than in the exercise of power.  An angry man may evince more energy than he who keeps calm in the heat of provocation, but the latter is the man of most power.  In the common circumstances of life we must act, and act lawfully; but to bear and suffer is alone the test of virtue, for there come hours of pain and mental anguish when all action is vain, when motion of limb and mind is powerless; then do we learn

“How sublime it is
To suffer and be strong.”

Then do we learn the great lesson that there is no quality more needed in our life than endurance.  There is so much which occurs outside the circle of our own free will, accidents both mental and physical.”

“And yet we feel there can be no accident.”

“Nothing in the highest analysis which can be termed such, for all things are either in divine order, or under human responsibility, which latter power is too limited.  What we term accidents are parts of, and belong to, the general plan, and when these occur, they serve to inspire us with endurance, which is no minor virtue-it is achievement-and bears its impress on the face.  These thoughts are those of another, who has so well expressed them, that I have given them to you in his own language.”