The end of a novel, like the end of a children’s dinner-party, must be made up of sweetmeats and sugar-plums.
When young Mark Robarts was leaving college, his father might well declare that all men began to say all good things to him, and to extol his fortune in that he had a son blessed with so excellent a disposition.
Money is neither god nor devil, that it should make one noble and another vile. It is an accident, and if honestly possessed, may pass from you to me, or from me to you, without a stain.
A woman’s life is not perfect or whole till she has added herself to a husband. Nor is a man’s life perfect or whole till he has added to himself a wife.
A bull in a china shop is not a useful animal, nor is he ornamental, but there can be no doubt of his energy. The hare was full of energy, but he didn’t win the race. The man who stands still is the man who keeps his ground.
When one wants to be natural, of necessity one becomes the reverse of natural.
Many people talk much, and then very many people talk very much more.
It may, indeed, be assumed that a man who loses his temper while he is speaking is endeavouring to speak the truth such as he believes it to be, and again it may be assumed that a man who speaks constantly without losing his temper is not always entitled to the same implicit faith.
If you cross the Atlantic with an American lady you invariably fall in love with her before the journey is over. Travel with the same woman in a railway car for twelve hours, and you will have written her down in your own mind in quite other language than that of love.
Your man with a thin skin, a vehement ambition, a scrupulous conscience, and a sanguine desire for rapid improvement is never a happy, and seldom a fortunate politician.
But as we do not light up our houses with our brightest lamps for all comers, so neither did she emit from her eyes their brightest sparks till special occasions for such shining had arisen.
With many women I doubt whether there be any more effectual wayof touching their hearts than ill-using them and then confessing it. If you wish to get the sweetest fragrance from the herb at your feet, tread on it and bruise it.
Let a man be of what side he may in politics, unless he be much more of a partisan than a patriot, he will think it well that there should be some equity of division in the bestowal of crumbs of comfort.
Satire, though it may exaggerate the vice it lashes, is not justified in creating it in order that it may be lashed.
Fame is a skittish jade, more fickle even than Fortune, and apt to shy, and bolt, and plunge away on very trifling causes.
A man who is supposed to have caused a disturbance between two married people, in a certain rank of life, does generally receive a certain meed of admiration.
To oblige a friend by inflicting an injury on his enemy is often more easy than to confer a benefit on the friend himself.
When the little dog snarls, the big dog does not connect the snarl with himself, simply fancying that the little dog must be uncomfortable.
I know very well that if you get men who are really, really swells, for that is what it is, Mr. Low, and pay them well enough, and so make it really an important thing, they can browbeat any judge and hoodwink any jury.
The natural man will probably be manly. The affected man cannot be so.
But mad people never die. That’s a well-known fact. They’ve nothing to trouble them, and they live for ever.