My life is not an apology, but a life.

There are men too superior to be seen except by a few, as there are notes too high for the scale of most ears.

You cannot do a kindness too soon, for you never know how soon it will be too late.

I am at a loss to understand why people hold Miss Austen's novels at so high a rate, which seem to me vulgar in tone, sterile in artistic invention, imprisoned in their wretched conventions of English society, without genius, wit, or knowledge of the world. Never was life so pinched and narrow. ... All that interests in any character [is this]: has he (or she) the money to marry with? ... Suicide is more respectable.

When you were born you were crying and everyone else was smiling. Live your life so at the end, your're the one who is smiling and everyone else is crying.

Fear God, and where you go men shall think they walk in hallowed cathedrals.

Some of your griefs you have cured, And the sharpest you still have survived, But what torments of grief you've endured From evils that never arrived.