Equality may be the law, but no human power can install it.

Emulation is not rivalry. Emulation is the child of ambition; rivalry is the unlovable daughter of envy.

A good husband is never the first to go to sleep at night or the last to awake in the morning.

It is as absurd to say that a man can't love one woman all the time as it is to say that a violinist needs several violins to play the same piece of music.

Danger arouses interest. Where death is involved, the vilest criminal invariably stirs a little compassion.

Ambitious men spend their youth in rendering themselves worthy of patronage; it is their great mistake. While the foolish creatures are laying in stores of knowledge and energy, so that they shall not sink under the weight of responsible posts that recede from them, schemers come and go who are wealthy in words and destitute of ideas, astonish the ignorant, and creep into the confidence of those who have a little knowledge.

Our happiness often depends upon social hypocrisies to which we will never stoop.