It sometimes happens that a woman is handsomer at twenty-nine than she was ten years before.

I am excessively fond of a cottage; there is always so much comfort, so much elegance about them. And I protest, if I had any money to spare, I should buy a little land and build one myself, within a short distance of London, where I might drive myself down at any time, and collect a few friends about me and be happy. I advise everybody who is going to build, to build a cottage.

I have no pretensions whatever to that kind of elegance which consists in tormenting a respectable man.

Silly things do cease to be silly if they are done by sensible people in an impudent way.

We are each of an unsocial, taciturn disposition, unwilling to speak, unless we expect to say something that will amaze the whole room, and be handed down to posterity with all the eclat of a proverb.

Such squeamish youths as cannot bear to be connected with a little absurdity are not worth a regret.

The post office has a great charm at one point of our lives. When you have lived to my age, you will begin to think letters are never worth going through the rain for.