We never discover the value of things till we have lost them.

Unless a woman has a decided pleasure and facility in teaching, an honest knowledge of everything she professes to impart, a liking for children, and, above all, a strong moral sense of her responsibility towards them, for her to attempt to enroll herself in the scholastic order is absolute profanation.

Better no marriage, than a marriage short of the best.

There is no sorrow under heaven which is, or ought to be, endless. To believe or to make it so, is an insult to Heaven itself.

Gossip, public, private, social - to fight against it either by word or pen seems, after all, like fighting with shadows. Everybody laughs at it, protests against it, blames and despises it; yet everybody does it, or at least encourages others in it: quite innocently, unconsciously, in such a small, harmless fashion - yet we do it. We must talk about something, and it is not all of us who can find a rational topic of conversation, or discuss it when found.

according to the old joke, married people are often like little boys bathing, who cry with chattering teeth to the boys on the shore, 'Do come in, it's so warm' - it is not always warm.

How the sting of poverty, or small means, is gone when one keeps house for one's own comfort and not for the comfort of one's neighbors.