Our Faults Are Apt To Assume Giant

Nothing Is So Painful To The Human Mind As A Great And Sudden Change. The Sun Might Shine, Or The Clouds Might Lour: But Nothing Could Appear To Me As It Had Done The Day Before.

You Will Rejoice To Hear That No Disaster Has Accompanied The Commencement Of An Enterprise Which You Have Regarded With Such Evil Forebodings.

I Feel Exquisite Pleasure In Dwelling On The Recollections Of Childhood, Before Misfortune Had Tainted My Mind, And Changed Its Bright Visions Of Extensive Usefulness Into Gloomy And Narrow Reflections Upon Self.

I Trembled, And My Heart Failed Within Me; When, On Looking Up, I Saw, By The Light Of The Moon, The Daemon At The Casement.

Our Feelings Probably Are Not Less Strong At Fifty Than They Were Ten Or Fifteen Years Before; But They Have Changed Their Objects, And Dwell On Far Different Prospects. At Five-and-thirty A Man Thinks Of What His Own Existence Is; When The Maturity Of Age Has Grown Into Its Autumn, He Is Wrapt Up In That Of Others. The Loss Of Wife Or Child Then Becomes More Deplorable, As Being Impossible To Repair; For No Fresh Connection Can Give Us Back The Companion Of Our Earlier Years, Nor A "new-sprung Race" Compensate For That, Whose Career We Hoped To See Run.