To take a wife merely as an agreeable and rational companion, will commonly be found to be a grand mistake.

It is commonly said that ridicule is the best test of truth; for that it will not stick where it is not just. I deny it. A truth learned in a certain light, and attacked in certain words, by men of wit and humor, may, and often doth, become ridiculous, at least so far, that the truth is only remembered and repeated for the sake of the ridicule.

The heart never grows better by age; I fear rather worse; always harder.

There is time enough for everything in the course of the day if you do but one thing once; but there is not time enough in the year if you will do two things at a time.

At any age we must cherish illusions, consolatory or merely pleasant; in youth, they are omnipresent; in old age we must search for them, or even invent them. But with all that, boredom is their natural and inevitable accompaniment.

I am very sure that any man of common understanding may, by culture, care, attention, and labor, make himself what- ever he pleases, except a great poet.

Women, then, are only children of a larger growth