This nice and subtle happiness of reading, this joy not chilled by age, this polite and unpunished vice, this selfish, serene life-long intoxication.

What humbugs we are, who pretend to live for beauty, and never see the dawn!

It is a matter of life and death for married people to interrupt each others stories; for it they did not, they would burst.

All mirrors are magical mirrors, and we never see our faces in them.

People have a right to be shocked; the mention of unmentionable things is a kind of participation in them.

A slight touch of friendly malice and amusement towards those we love keeps our affections for them from turning flat.

Uncultivated minds are not full of wild flowers, like uncultivated fields. Villainous weeds grow in them and they are the haunt of toads.