Till we can become divine, we must be content to be human, lest in our hurry for change we sink to something lower.
Words spoken cannot be recalled, and many a man and many a woman who has spoken a word at once regretted, are far too proud to express that regret.
There is no way of writing well and also of writing easily.
My belief of book writing is much the same as my belief as to shoemaking. The man who will work the hardest at it, and will work with the most honest purpose, will work the best.
There is no royal road to learning; no short cut to the acquirement of any art.
Let no man boast himself that he has got through the perils of winter till at least the seventh of May.
No other American city is so intensely American as New York.
Of course, Lady Arabella could not suckle the young heir herself. Ladies Arabella never can. They are gifted with the powers of being mothers, but not nursing mothers. Nature gives them bosoms for show, but not for use. So Lady Arabella had a wet-nurse.
There is no happiness in love, except at the end of an English novel.
Don’t let love interfere with your appetite. It never does with mine.
After money in the bank, a grudge is the next best thing.
When the ivy has found its tower, when the delicate creeper has found its strong wall, we know how the parasite plants grow and prosper.
I hold that gentleman to be the best-dressed whose dress no one observes.
And though it is much to be a nobleman, it is more to be a gentleman.
High rank and soft manners may not always belong to a true heart.
I have no ambition to surprise my reader. Castles with unknown passages are not compatible with my homely muse.
But who ever yet was offered a secret and declined it?
Late hours, nocturnal cigars, and midnight drinkings, pleasurable though they may be, consume too quickly the free-flowing lamps of youth, and are fatal at once to the husbanded candle-ends of age.
The best way to be thankful is to use the goods the gods provide you.
I run great risk of failing. It may be that I shall encounter ruin where I look for reputation and a career of honor. The chances are perhaps more in favour of ruin than of success. But, whatever may be the chances, I shall go on as long as any means of carrying on the fight are at my disposal.