bad literature of the sort called amusing is spiritual gin.

Ignorance ... is a painless evil; so, I should think, is dirt, considering the merry faces that go along with it.

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

Delicious autumn! My very soul is wedded to it.

To have suffered much is like knowing many languages. Thou hast learned to understand all.

There are answers which, in turning away wrath, only send it to the other end of the room, and to have a discussion coolly waived when you feel that justice is all on your own side is even more exasperating in marriage than in philosophy.

Signs are small measurable things, but interpretations are illimitable, and in girls of sweet, ardent nature, every sign is apt to conjure up wonder, hope, belief, vast as a sky, and colored by a thimbleful of matter in the shape of knowledge....wrong reasoning sometimes lands poor mortals in right conclusions: starting a long way off the true point, and proceeding by loops and zigzags, we now and then arrive just where we ought to be. Just because Miss Brooke was hasty in her trust, it is not therefore clear that Mr. Casaubon was unworthy of it.