If success is rare and slow, everybody knows how quick and easy ruin is.

A woman may possess the wisdom and chastity of Minerva, and we give no heed to her, if she has a plain face. What folly will not a pair of bright eyes make pardonable? What dullness may not red lips are sweet accents render pleasant? And so, with their usual sense of justice, ladies argue that because a woman is handsome, therefore she is a fool. O ladies, ladies! there are some of you who are neither handsome nor wise.

We are most of us very lonely in this world; you who have any who love you, cling to them and thank God.

For his part, every beauty of art or nature made him thankful as well as happy, and that the pleasure to be had in listening to fine music, as in looking at the stars in the sky, or at a beautiful landscape or picture, was a benefit for which we might thank Heaven as sincerely as for any other worldly blessing.

Life is a mirror: if you frown at it, it frowns back; if you smile, it returns the greeting.

Perhaps all early love affairs ought to be strangled or drowned, like so many blind kittens.

Diffidence is a sort of false modesty.