Few authors feel sufficiently themselves to make others ″feel.
Such lovely warmth of thought and delicacy of colour are beyond all praise, and equally beyond all thanks!
You should always be well and bright, for so you do your best work; and you have so much beautiful work to do. The world needs it, and you must give it!
No one is contented in this world, I believe. There is always something left to desire, and the last thing longed for always seems the most necessary to happiness.
Wealth acts merely as a kind of mirror to show you human nature at its worst.
Fame, or notoriety, whichever that special noise may be called when the world like a hound ‘gives tongue’ and announces that the quarry in some form of genius is at bay, is apt to increase its clamor in proportion to the aloofness of the pursued animal...
Years should be nothing to you. Who asked you to count them or consider them? In the world of wild Nature, time is measured by seasons only-the bird does not know how old it is-the rose-tree does not count its birthdays!
Pleasure for others is the only pleasure possible to me. I assure you I’m quite selfish! – I’m greedy for the happiness of those I love – and if they can’t or won’t be happy I’m perfectly miserable.
I never married because there was no need. I have three pets at home which answer the same purpose as a husband. I have a dog which growls every morning, a parrot which swears all afternoon, and a cat that comes home late at night.
Great Poets discover themselves. Little Poets have to be ‘discovered’ by somebody else.
When one loves God better than the Church is one called a heretic?
For though there never was so much reading matter put before the public, there was never less actual ‘reading’ in the truest and highest sense of the term than there is at present.
There is nothing so depressing as a constant contemplation of one’s self, and the greatest moral cowardice in the world’s opinion comes from consulting one’s own personal convenience.
An opinion which excites no opposition at all is not worth having!
It is not so difficult to win love as to keep it!
How foolish it would be if women did not obey men. The world would be all confusion!