We all profess to believe when we’re told that this world should be used merely as a preparation for the next; and yet there is something so cold and comfortless in the theory that we do not relish the prospect even for our children.
Nothing reopens the springs of love so fully as absence, and no absence so thoroughly as that which must needs be endless.
It is easy to love one’s enemy when one is making fine speeches; but so difficult to do so in the actual everyday work of life.
Before the reader is introduced to the modest country medical practitioner who is to be the chief personage of the following tale, it will be well that he should be made acquainted with some particulars as to the locality in which, and the neighbours among whom, our doctor followed his profession.
A man will be generally very old and feeble before he forgets how much money he has in the funds.
Never mingle love and business.
There is nothing more tyrannical than a strong popular feeling among a democratic people.
It is the test of a novel writer’s art that he conceal his snake-in-the-grass; but the reader may be sure that it is always there.
It is self-evident that at sixty-five a man has done all that he is fit to do.
No man thinks there is much ado about nothing when the ado is about himself.
I never believe anything that a lawyer says when he has a wig on his head and a fee in his hand. I prepare myself beforehand to regard it all as mere words, supplied at so much the thousand. I know he’ll say whatever he thinks most likely to forward his own views.
Cham is the only thing to screw one up when one is down a peg.
But then in novels the most indifferent hero comes out right at last. Some god comes out of a theatrical cloud and leaves the poor devil ten thousand-a-year and a title.
I ain’t a bit ashamed of anything.
It has been the great fault of our politicians that they have all wanted to do something.
It is necessary to get a lot of men together, for the show of the thing, otherwise the world will not believe. That is the meaning of committees. But the real work must always be done by one or two men.
For themost of us, if we donot talkof ourselves, orat any rate of the individual circles of which we are the centres, we can talk of nothing. I cannot hold with those who wish to put down the insignificant chatter of the world.
The good and the bad mix themselves so thoroughly in our thoughts, even in our aspirations, that we must look for excellence rather in overcoming evil than in freeing ourselves from its influence.
One doesn’t have an agreement to that effect written down on parchment and sealed; but it is as well understood and ought to be as faithfully kept as any legal contract.
The end of a novel, like the end of a children’s dinner-party, must be made up of sweetmeats and sugar-plums.