We are ourselves our happiness.

There is no existence so content as that whose present is engrossed by employment, and whose future is filled by some strong hope, the truth of which is never proved. Toil and illusion are the only secrets to make life tolerable.

All sweeping assertions are erroneous.

Whatever people in general do not understand, they are al ways prepared to dislike; the incomprehensible is always the obnoxious.

I cannot see why a taste for the country should be held so very indispensable a requisite for excellence; but really people talk of it as if it were a virtue, and as if an opposite opinion was, to say the least of it, very immoral.

... many a heart is caught in the rebound ... Pride may be soothed by the ready devotion of another; vanity may be excited the more keenly by recent mortification.

Society is like a large piece of frozen water; and skating well is the great art of social life.