Opinions: men’s thoughts about great subjects. Taste: their thoughts about small ones: dress, behavior, amusements, ornaments.
Particular lies may speak a general truth.
A common fallacy: to imagine a measure will be easy because we have private motives for desiring it.
The wit of a family is usually best received among strangers.
I love words; they are the quoits, the bows, the staves that furnish the gymnasium of the mind.
My books don’t seem to belong to me after I have once written them; and I find myself delivering opinions about them as if I had nothing to do with them.
There are new eras in one’s life that are equivalent to youth-are something better than youth.
The first sense of mutual love excludes other feelings; it will have the soul all to itself.
There is no sense of ease like the ease we felt in those scenes where we were born.
The tale of the Divine Pity was never yet believed from lips that were not felt to be moved by human pity.
Net the large fish and you are sure to have the small fry.
We have all our secret sins; and if we knew ourselves we should not judge each other harshly.
I will to make life less bitter for a few within my reach.
Jews are not fit for Heaven, but on earth they are most useful.
If you are not proud of your cellar, there is no thrill of satisfaction in seeing your guest hold up his wineglass to the light and look judicial.
There are natures in which, if they love us, we are conscious of having a sort of baptism and consecration.
When you get me a good man made out of arguments, I will get you a good dinner with reading you the cookery book.
Brothers are so unpleasant.
But how little we know what would make paradise for our neighbours! We judge from our own desires, and our neighbours themselves are not always open enough even to throw out a hint of theirs.
Unwonted circumstances may make us all rather unlike ourselves: there are conditions under which the most majestic person is obliged to sneeze, and our emotions are liable to be acted on in the same incongruous manner.