To dance with a man is to concentrate a twelvemonth's regulation fire upon him in the fragment of an hour. To pass to courtship without acquaintance, to pass to marriage without courtship, is a skipping of terms reserved for those alone who tread this royal road.

War makes good history but peace is poor reading.

If an offense come out of the truth, better is it that the offense come than that the truth be concealed.

Ladies know what to guard against, because they read novels that tell them of these tricks.

But nothing is more insidious than the evolution of wishes from mere fancies, and of wants from mere wishes.

Time changes everything except something within us which is always surprised by change.

Bathsheba loved Troy in the way that only self-reliant women love when they abandon their self-reliance. When a strong woman recklessly throws away her strength she is worse than a weak woman who has never any strength to throw away. One source of her inadequacy is the novelty of the occasion. She has never had practice in making the best of such a condition. Weakness is doubly weak by being new.