Men are always optimists when they look inwards, and pessimists when they look round them.

you have not a boat of your own, that is just it; that is what women always suffer from; they have to steer, but the craft is some one else's, and the haul too.

Music is not a science any more than poetry is. It is a sublime instinct, like genius of all kinds.

The art of pleasing is more based on the art of seeming pleased than people think of, and she disarmed the prejudices of her enemies by the unaffected delight she appeared to take in themselves.

Emulation is active virtue; envy is brooding malice.

Love, the one supreme, unceasing source of human felicity, the one sole joy which lifts the whole mortal existence into the empyrean, was by it [Christianity] degraded into the mere mechanical action of reproduction.

Intensely selfish people are always very decided as to what they wish. They do not waste their energies in considering the good of others.