... in no part of the world is genteel visiting founded on esteem, in the absence of suitable furniture and complete dinner-service.

Every woman is supposed to have the same set of motives, or else to be a monster.

The sense of an entailed disadvantage - the deformed foot doubtfully hidden by the shoe, makes a restlessly active spiritual yeast, and easily turns a self-centered, unloving nature into an Ishmaelite.

Every year strips us of at least one vain expectation, and teaches us to reckon some solid good in its stead.

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.

When a workman knows the use of his tools, he can make a door as well as a window.

The mother's love is at first an absorbing delight, blunting all other sensibilities; it is an expansion of the animal existence.