Renunciation remains sorrow, though a sorrow borne willingly.
What quarrel, what harshness, what unbelief in each other can subsist in the presence of a great calamity, when all the artificial vesture of our life is gone, and we are all one with each other in primitive mortal needs?
When one wanted one’s interests looking after whatever the cost, it was not so well for a lawyer to be over honest, else he might not be up to other people’s tricks.
I’ve never any pity for conceited people, because I think they carry their comfort about with them.
The intense happiness of our union is derived in a high degree from the perfect freedom with which we each follow and declare our own impressions.
But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.
You may try but you can never imagine what it is to have a man’s form of genius in you, and to suffer the slavery of being a girl.
Life is too precious to be spent in this weaving and unweaving of false impressions, and it is better to live quietly under some degree of misrepresentation than to attempt to remove it by the uncertain process of letter-writing.
The best augury of a man’s success in his profession is that he thinks it the finest in the world.
A difference of taste in jokes is a great strain on the affections.
Vanity is as ill at ease under indifference as tenderness is under a love which it cannot return.
You have such strong words at command, that they make the smallest argument seem formidable.
No compliment can be eloquent, except as an expression of indifference.
The years between fifty and seventy are the hardest. You are always being asked to do things, and yet you are not decrepit enough to turn them down.
To have in general but little feeling, seems to be the only security against feeling too much on any particular occasion.
The beginning of an acquaintance whether with persons or things is to get a definite outline of our ignorance.
A supreme love, a motive that gives a sublime rhythm to a woman’s life, and exalts habit into partnership with the soul’s highest needs, is not to be had where and how she wills.
One soweth and another reapeth is a verity that applies to evil as well as good.
Every woman is supposed to have the same set of motives, or else to be a monster.
We must not inquire too curiously into motives… They are apt to become feeble in the utterance: the aroma is mixed with the grosser air. We must keep the germinating grain away from the light.
It is generally a feminine eye that first detects the moral deficiencies hidden under the dear deceit of beauty.
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