What destroys us most effectively is not a malign fate but our own capacity for self-deception and for degrading our own best self.

... learning to love any one is like an increase of property, -- it increases care, and brings many new fears lest precious things should come to harm.

but very little achievement is required in order to pity another man's shortcomings.

Things are achieved when they are well begun.

We must not inquire too curiously into motives. they are apt to become feeble in the utterance: the aroma is mixed with the grosser air. We must keep the germinating grain away from the light.

Plain women he regarded as he did the other severe facts of life, to be faced with philosophy and investigated by science.

A woman's hopes are woven of sunbeams; a shadow annihilates them.