Beauty is also a Gift of God, one of the most rare and precious, and we should be thankful if we are happy enough to possess it and thankful, if we are not, that others possess it for our pleasure.

Men have an extraordinarily erroneous opinion of their position in nature; and the error is ineradicable.

If people waited to know one another before they married, the world wouldn't be as overpopulated as it is now.

Loving-kindness is the better part of goodness. It lends grace to the sterner qualities of which this consists.

I do not think you want too much sincerity in society. It would be like an iron girder in a house of cards.

In the country the darkness of night is friendly and familiar, but in a city, with its blaze of lights, it is unnatural, hostile and menacing. It is like a monstrous vulture that hovers, biding its time.

When people say they do not care what others think of them, for the most part they deceive themselves. Generally they mean only that they will do as they choose, in the confidence that no one will know their vagaries; and at the utmost only that they are willing to act contrary to the opinion of the majority because they are supported by the approval of their neighbours. It is not difficult to be unconventional in the eyes of the world when your unconventionality is but the convention of your set.