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 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.

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.

It is often easier to justify one's self to others than to respond to the secret doubts that arise in one's own bosom.

Somehow even a popular fallacy has an aspect of truth when it suits one's own case.

Temptations come, as a general rule, when they are sought.

Even in misery we love to be foremost, to have the bitter in our cup acknowledged as more bitter than that of others.