"I don't believe there are many happy lives. Mama gave me more happiness in the given number of years than I shall ever have again, though doubtless, if I live long enough, I shall have some more happy moments. This is to be supposed. But all this matters so very, very little."
"I don't think that out of what is anything better is going to be."
"The external situation in general is not bad and as far as I can see, the trouble lies in the natures of the individuals and is more or less beyond remedy. The tragedy arriving from trying to unite in action and purpose where in mind and heart and soul there is no union, no mutual illumination, no mutual comprehension of the point of view, will be everlasting. 'Constater et accepter' and the sooner to 'constater' correctly, the sooner futile struggle ends."
"Goodnight. I neither weep nor laugh and I am glad to go to bed; might be a good deal worse off, if I had no bed."
Ashantee 1899.
"I have lots of things to talk to you about but I don't know where to begin. I want to say one thing that I think, which is that I think it is very difficult to judge practically when a too analytical definition of a condition or state is substituted for the ordinary and worldly vernacular. I think one must often fall into error from too great an attempt of metaphysical accuracy (precision), for whatever the thing in essence, the reaction thereof upon the multitude is made more forcible and more lucid to the mind by the term applied to it at large. For instance a crank is not a person of peculiar fancies."
Ashantee 1899.
"Great griefs are beyond all expression, but the stillness of agonizing moments is worse. Why, oh, why anything?"
"I cannot feel anything. That makes variety but it is being alone in interests, the feeling unchanged, the purposes conceived and striven for singly that makes the struggle seem hard and the achievement futile."
A girl of twenty or twenty-one, she was always questioning, always, seeking, always disturbed.