I trust you as holy men trust God; you could do nought that was not pure and loving, though the deed might pierce me unto death.
Our vanities differ as our noses do: all conceit is not the same conceit, but varies in correspondence with the minutiae of mental make in which one of us differs from another.
The vainest woman is never thoroughly conscious of her beauty till she is loved by the man who sets her own passion vibrating in return.
The early months of marriage often are times of critical tumult, – whether that of a shrimp pool or of deeper water, – which afterwards subside into cheerful peace.
To think of the part one little woman can play in the life of a man, so that to renounce her may be a very good imitation of heroism, and to win her may be a discipline.
We reap what we sow, but nature has love over and above that justice, and gives us shadow and blossom and fruit, that spring from no planting of ours.
It is one thing to see your road, another to cut it.
To superficial observers his chin had too vanishing an aspect, looking as if it were being gradually reabsorbed. And it did indeed cause him some difficulty about the fit of his satin stocks, for which chins were at that time useful.
Appearances have very little to do with happiness.
It is always your heaviest bore who is astonished at the tameness of modern celebrities: naturally; for a little of his company has reduced them to a state of flaccid fatigue.
Don’t you meddle with me, and I won’t meddle with you.
I think cheerfulness is a fortune in itself.
Childhood is only the beautiful and happy time in contemplation and retrospect: to the child it is full of deep sorrows, the meaning of which is unknown.
There’s folks ’ud hold a sieve under the pump and expect to carry away the water.
It is always chilling, in friendly intercourse, to say you have no opinion to give.
It is a sad weakness in us, after all, that the thought of a man’s death hallows him anew to us; as if life were not sacred too.
We mortals, men and women, devour many a disappointment between breakfast and dinnertime.
It’s no trifle at her time at her time of life to part with a doctor who knows her constitution.
We cannot reform our forefathers.
Death was not to be a leap: it was to be a long descent under thickening shadows.