These are the soul's changes. I don't believe in ageing. I believe in forever altering one's aspect to the sun. Hence my optimism.

Love and religion! thought Clarissa, going back into the drawing room, tingling all over. How detestable, how detestable they are!

Travelers are much at the mercy of phrases ... vast generalizations formulate in their exposed brains.

While fame impedes and constricts, obscurity wraps about a man like a mist; obscurity is dark, ample, and free; obscurity lets the mind take its way unimpeded. Over the obscure man is poured the merciful suffusion of darkness. None knows where he goes or comes. He may seek the truth and speak it; he alone is free; he alone is truthful, he alone is at peace.

But the close withdrew: the hand softened. It was over-- the moment.

Most of a modest woman's life was spent, after all, in denying what, in one day at least of every year, was made obvious.

Old Madame du Deffand and her friends talked for fifty years without stopping. And of it all, what remains? Perhaps three witty sayings. So that we are at liberty to suppose either that nothing was said, or that nothing witty was said, or that the fraction of three witty sayings lasted eighteen thousand two hundred and fifty nights, which does not leave a liberal allowance of wit for any one of them.