For character too is a process and an unfoldingamong our valued friends is there not someone or other who is a little too self confident and disdainful; whose distinguished mind is a little spotted with commonness; who is a little pinched here and protruberent there with native prejudices; or whose better energies are liable to lapse down the wrong channel under the influence of transient solicitations?

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

Saints and martyrs had never interested Maggie so much as sages and poets.

Our vanities differ as our noses do: all conceit is not the same conceit, but varies in correspondence with the minutiae of mental make in which one of us differs from another.

Perfect love has a breath of poetry which can exalt the relations of the least-instructed human beings.

Sympathetic people often don't communicate well, they back reflected images which hide their own depths.

The wit of a family is usually best received among strangers.