It is so seldom in this world that things come just when they are wanted.

... 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.

To have a man who can flirt is next thing to indispensable to a leader of society.

Perhaps, on the whole, embarrassment and perplexity are a kind of natural accompaniment to life and movement; and it is better to be driven out of your senses with thinking which of two things you ought to do than to do nothing whatever, and be utterly uninteresting to all the world.

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

Laughing is not the first expression of joy. ... A person laughs in idleness, for fun, not for joy. Joy has nothing, nothing but the old way of tears.

I think reading a novel is almost next best to having something to do.