some's "lancet-edged epigrams" are dull in
comparison with her own. She uses them with startling success in
dissecting motive and analyzing feeling. They deserve as great renown as
"Nelaton's probe."

For example: "Examine your words well, and you will find that even when
you have no motive to be false, it is a very hard thing to say the exact
truth, especially about your own feelings--much harder than to say
something fine about them which is not the exact truth." That ought to
make such a revelation of the religious diary-keeper to himself as to
make him ashamed of himself. And this will fit in here: "Our consciences
are not of the same pattern, an inner deliverance of fixed laws--they are
the voice of sensibilities as various as our memories;" and this: "Every
strong feeling makes to itself a conscience of its own--has its own
piety."

Who can say that the joints of his armor are not open to this thrust?
"The lapse of time during which a given event has not happened is in the
logic of habit, constantly alleged as a reason why the event should never
happen, even when the lapse of time is precisely the added condition
which makes the event imminent. A man will tell you that he worked in a
mine for forty years unhurt by an accident as a reason why he should
apprehend no danger, though the roof is beginning to sink." Silas Marner
lost his money through his "sense of security," which "more frequently
springs from habit than conviction." He went unrobbed for fifteen years,
which supplied the only needed condition for his being robbed now. A
compensation for stupidity: "If we had a keen vision and feeling of all
ordinary human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow and the
squirrel's heart beat, and we should die of that roar that lies on the
other side of silence. As it is, the quickest of us walk about well
wadded with stupidity." Who does not at once recognize "that mixture of
pushing forward and being pushed forward" as "the brief history of most
human beings?" Who has not seen "advancement hindered by impetuous
candor?" or "private grudges christened by the name of public zeal?" or
"a church built with an exuberance of faith and a deficiency of funds?"
or a man "who would march determinedly along the road he thought best,
but who was easily convinced which was best?" or a preacher "whose
oratory was like a Belgian railway horn, which shows praiseworthy
intentions inadequately fulfilled?"

There is