Surprises are like misfortunes or herrings - they rarely come single.

I cannot love evergreens - they are the misanthropes of nature. To them the spring brings no promise, the autumn no decline; they are cut off from the sweetest of all ties with their kind - sympathy. ... I will have no evergreens in my garden; when the inevitable winter comes, every beloved plant and favorite tree shall drop together - no solitary fir left to triumph over the companionship of decay.

All beginnings are very troublesome things.

English people ... never speak, excepting in cases of fire or murder, unless they are introduced.

youth, balancing itself upon hope, is forever in extremes: its expectations are continually aroused only to be baffled, and disappointment, like a summer shower, is violent in proportion to its brevity.

A woman only can understand a woman.

We are ourselves our happiness.