[On collectors of quotations:] How far our literature may in future suffer from these blighting swarms, will best be conceived by a glance at what they have already withered and blasted of the favourite productions of our most popular poets.

when driven to the necessity of explaining, I found that I did not myself understand what I meant.

If young women were not deceived into a belief that affectation pleases, they would scarcely trouble themselves to practise it so much.

We may make our future by the best use of the present. There is no moment like the present.

I find the love of garden grows upon me as I grow older more and more. Shrubs and flowers and such small gay things, that bloom and please and fade and wither and are gone and we care not for them, are refreshing interests, in life, and if we cannot say never fading pleasures, we may say unreproved pleasures and never grieving losses.

you've always been living on prospects; for my part, I'd rather have a mole-hill in possession than a mountain in prospect.

how impossible it is not to laugh in some company, or to laugh in others.