Appearances have very little to do with happiness.

But human experience is usually paradoxical, that means incongruous with the phrases of current talk or even current philosophy.

...Though there's reasons in things as nobody knows on---- that's pretty much what I've made out; yet some folks are so wise they'll find you fifty reasons straight off, and all the while the real reason's winking at 'em in the corner, and they niver see't.

We are all of us born in moral stupidity, taking the world as an udder to feed our supreme selves

A picture of human life such as a great artist can give, surprises even the trivial and the selfish into that attention to what is apart from themselves, which may be called the raw material of moral sentiment.

Nothing is so good as it seems beforehand.

You may try — but you can never imagine what it is to have a man's force of genius in you, and yet to suffer the slavery of being a girl.