How often should a woman be pregnant? Continually, or hardly ever? Or must there be a certain number of pregnancy anniversaries established by fashion? What do you, at the age of forty-three, have to say on the subject? Is it a fact that the laws of nature, or of the country, or of propriety, have ordained this time of life for sterility?

Letters should be easy and natural, and convey to the persons to whom we send them just what we should say to the persons if we were with them.

Cautiously avoid speaking of the domestic affairs either of yourself, or of other people. Yours are nothing to them but tedious gossip; and theirs are nothing to you.

There never were, since the creation of the world, two cases exactly parallel.

Let it be your maxim through life, to know all you can know, yourself; and never to trust implicitly to the information of others.

You must look into people, as well as at them.

Nothing sharpens the arrow of sarcasm so keenly as the courtesy that polishes it; no reproach is like that we clothe with a smile and present with a bow.