the blessings of matrimony, like those of poverty, belong rather to philosophy than reality.

We might have been - these are but common words, and yet they make the sum of life's bewailing.

It is amazing how much a thought expands and refines by being put into speech: I should think it could hardly know itself.

It merely shews, after all, that affection is a habit.

Sneering springs out of the wish to deny; and wretched must that state of mind be that wishes to take refuge in doubt.

Memory has many conveniences, and, among others, that of foreseeing things as they have afterwards happened.

Conscience, like a child, is soon lulled to sleep.