Laura Spencer Portor

“ No doubt in their courts I might have been arraigned for a cruel creature; yet I came away a reverent and not less a humble one.
A great man has declared that two things forever struck him newly with awe—the starry heavens and the moral principle in man. How far, how far, I wonder, does the moral principle extend, and where are its remote beginnings? Personality, character, and infinite diversity, what are they? ”

“ All that which adds flavor, variety, distinction, and a million, million treasures to the universe—what determines it? And who knows, remembering those two tiny creatures, the one faithful, the other not, how little and how small a thing is human blame in the midst of this vast variety. ”

“ For by strands and cables and weavings and cords they were indeed made as safe as spiders could spiderly make them. Here on their own scale, at least, was absolute security. Indeed, they were so secure that the spiders themselves had both traveled far from them, to the lower parts of the webs, and were giving them, I believe, not a single thought; off, bent on other things, and without a particle of anxiety for the young fry left suspended so neatly in those little prenatal cradles. ”