For what is love itself, for the one we love best? An enfolding of immeasurable cares which yet are better than any joys outside our love.

But she took her husband's jokes and joviality as patiently as everything else, considering that "men would be so", and viewing the stronger sex in the light of animals whom it had pleased Heaven to make naturally troublesome, like bulls and turkey-cocks.

What sunshine is to flowers, smiles are to humanity.

To manage men one ought to have a sharp mind in a velvet sheath.

Ignorant kindness may have the effect of cruelty; but to be angry with it as if it were direct cruelty would be an ignorant unkindness.

Some people are born to make life pretty, and others to grumble that it is not pretty enough.

... it is one thing to like defiance, and another thing to like its consequences.