Regrets are idle; yet history is one long regret. Everything might have turned out so differently.

The excellence of a gift lies in its appropriateness rather than in its value

Nature is, in fact, a suggester of uneasiness, a promoter of pilgrimages and of excursions of the fancy which never come to any satisfactory haven.

The chief effect of talk on any subject is to strengthen one's own opinions, and, in fact, one never knows exactly what he does believe until he is warmed into conviction by the heat of attack and defence.

A woman set on anything will walk right through the moral crockery without wincing.

In onion is strength; and a garden without it lacks flavour. The onion, in its satin wrappings, is among the most beautiful of vegetables; and it is the only one that represents the essence of things. It can almost be said to have a soul.

Memory has the singular characteristic of recalling in a friend absent, as in a journey long past, only that which is agreeable.