Her little butterfly soul fluttered incessantly between memory and dubious expectation.

Hostesses who entertain much must make up their parties as ministers make up their cabinets, on grounds other than personal liking.

Subtract from the New Testament the miraculous and highly impossible, and what will be the remainder?

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.

Family likeness has often a deep sadness in it.

Love has a way of cheating itself consciously, like a child who plays at solitary hide-and-seek; it is pleased with assurances that it all the while disbelieves.

The beauty of a lovely woman is like music.