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.

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

every generation has a conceit of itself which elevates it, in its own opinion, above that which comes after it.

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

Against the long years when family bonds make up all that is happiest in life, there must always be reckoned those moments of agitation and revolution, during which the bosom of a family is the most unrestful and disturbing place in existence.

A hotel is a hotel all the world over, a place essentially vulgar, commonplace, venal, the travesty of a human home.

Good works may only be beautiful sins, if they are not done in a true spirit.