Fancy tortures more people than does reality

Dissimulation is the only thing that makes society possible; without its amenities the world would be a bear-garden.

Women hope that the dead love may revive; but men know that of all dead things none are so past recall as a dead passion.

Genius cannot escape the taint of its time more than a child the influence of its begetting.

Sport inevitably creates deadness of feeling. No one could take pleasure in it who was sensitive to suffering; and therefore its pursuit by women is much more to be regretted than its pursuit by men, because women pursue much more violently and recklessly what they pursue at all.

Take hope from the heart of man, and you make him a beast of prey.

Excess always carries its own retribution.