There can be no fairer ambition than to excel in talk; to be affable, gay, ready, clear, and welcome.

Lastly (and this is, perhaps, the golden rule), no woman should marry a man who does not smoke.

There is indeed one element in human destiny that not blindness itself can controvert: whatever else we are intended to do, we are not intended to succeed; failure is the fate allotted. It is so in every art and study; it is so above all in the continent art of living well.

Doubtless the world is quite right in a million ways; but you have to be kicked about a little to convince you of the fact.

But we are so fond of life that we have no leisure to entertain the terror of death. It is a honeymoon with us all through, and none of the longest. Small blame to us if we give our whole hearts to this glowing bride of ours, to the appetities, to honour, to the hungry curiosity of the mind, to the pleasure of the eyes in nature, and the pride of our own nimble bodies.

The essence of love is kindness.

No man is useless while he has a friend.