... I have always been a disappointment to my friends. I have no gift of talk, not much to say; and though I have always been an excellent listener, that only succeeds under auspicious circumstances.

Oh, never mind the fashion. When one has a style of one's own, it is always twenty times better.

What happiness is there which is not purchased with more or less of pain?

The middle of life is the testing-ground of character and strength.

Terror of being found out is not always a preservative, it sometimes hurries on the act which it ought to prevent.

There is nothing more effectual in showing us the weakness of any habitual fallacy or assumption than to hear it sympathetically through the ears, as it were, of a skeptic.

... I have always been a disappointment to my friends. I have no gift of talk, not much to say; and though I have always been an excellent listener, that only succeeds under auspicious circumstances.