Pride helps us; and pride is not a bad thing when it only urges us to hide our own hurts—not to hurt others.

Our passions do not live apart in locked chambers but dress in their small wardrobe of notions, bring their provisions to a common table and mess together, feeding out of the common store according to their appetite.

There's things to put up wi' in ivery place, an' you may change an' change an' not better yourself when all's said an' done.

It is only a poor sort of happiness that could ever come by caring very much about our own pleasures. We can only have the highest happiness such as goes along with being a great man, by having wide thoughts and much feeling for the rest of the world as well as ourselves.

Iteration, like friction, is likely to generate heat instead of progress.

It is always your heaviest bore who is astonished at the tameness of modern celebrities: naturally; for a little of his company has reduced them to a state of flaccid fatigue.

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