Real life seems to have no plots.

People's weaker side is not necessarily their truer self.

Pushing forty? She's hanging on for dear life.

Well, Buttermere, this is a day that is good to live and breathe in, that makes a man feel in his prime. Standing here in front of my house, I feel as young as when I moved into it thirty years ago, in the year eighteen hundred and fifty-nine. What aged man would you take me to be, as I step as it were casually into your view?

My youth is escaping without giving me anything it owes me.

I am ill at ease with people whose lives are an open book.

Duty is seldom liked either by the doer or the object ... And why should it be? It is not often of advantage to either.