Harold, like the rest of us, had many impressions which saved him the trouble of distinct ideas.
Our instructed vagrancy, which has hardly time to linger by the hedgerows, but runs away early to the tropics, and is at home with palms and banyans –which is nourished on books of travel, and stretches the theatre of its imagination to the Zambesi.
There is a sort of jealousy which needs very little fire; it is hardly a passion, but a blight bred in the cloudy, damp despondency of uneasy egoism.
Hostesses who entertain much must make up their parties as ministers make up their cabinets, on grounds other than personal liking.
For what is love itself, for the one we love best? An enfolding of immeasurable cares which yet are better than any joys outside our love.
When we get to wishing a great deal for ourselves, whatever we get soon turns into mere limitation and exclusion.
It is possible to have a strong self-love without any self-satisfaction, rather with a self-discontent which is the more intense because one’s own little core of egoistic sensibility is a supreme care.
The finest language is mostly made up of simple unimposing words.
We women are always in danger of living too exclusively in the affections; and though our affections are perhaps the best gifts we have, we ought also to have our share of the more independent life — some joy in things for their own sake. It is piteous to see the helplessness of some sweet women when their affections are disappointed — because all their teaching has been, that they can only delight in study of any kind for the sake of a personal love. They have never contemplated an independent delight in ideas as an experience which they could confess without being laughed at. Yet surely women need this defense against passionate affliction even more than men.
Breed is stronger than pasture.
I’m not denyin’ the women are foolish. God Almighty made ’em to match the men.
A difference of taste in jokes is a great strain on the affections.
The difficult task of knowing another soul is not for young gentlemen whose consciousness is chiefly made up of their own wishes.
There is a great deal of unmapped country within us which would have to be taken into account in an explanation of our gusts and storms.
Strange, that some of us, with quick alternate vision, see beyond our infatuations, and even while we rave on the heights, behold the wide plain where our persistent self pauses and awaits us.
There are some cases in which the sense of injury breeds – not the will to inflict injuries and climb over them as a ladder, but – a hatred of all injury.
How lovely the little river is, with its dark changing wavelets! It seems to me like a living companion while I wander along the bank, and listen to its low, placid voice…
Errors look so very ugly in persons of small means – one feels they are taking quite a liberty in going astray; whereas people of fortune may naturally indulge in a few delinquencies.
Opposition may become sweet to a man when he has christened it persecution.
People who can’t be witty exert themselves to be devout and affectionate.
Is it not rather what we expect in men, that they should have numerous strands of experience lying side by side and never compare them with each other?
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