I sadly want a reform in the construction of children. Nature's only idea seems to be to make them machines for the production of incessant noise.

We neither know nor judge ourselves; others may judge, but cannot know us. God alone judges and knows us.

The dull people decided years and years ago, as everyone knows, that novel-writing was the lowest species of literary exertion, and that novel reading was a dangerous luxury and an utter waste of time.

I am a citizen of the world, and I have met, in my time, with so many different sorts of virtue, that I am puzzled, in my old age, to say which is the right sort and which is the wrong.

The evening advanced. The shadows lengthened. The waters of the lake grew pitchy black. The gliding of the ghostly swans became rare and more rare.

I am thinking,’ he remarked quietly, ’whether I shall add to the disorder in this room, by scattering your brains about the fireplace.

She looked so irresistibly beautiful as she said those brave words that no man alive could have steel his heart against her.