Despair is perfectly compatible with a good dinner, I promise you.

Business first; pleasure afterwards.

It's a great comfort to some people to groan over their imaginary ills.

I suppose as long as novels last, and authors aim at interesting their public, there must always be in the story a virtuous and gallant hero; a wicked monster, his opposite; and a pretty girl, who finds a champion. Bravery and virtue conquer beauty; and vice, after seeming to triumph through a certain number of pages, is sure to be discomfited in the last volume, when justice overtakes him, and honest folks come by their own.

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.

It is impossible, in our condition of Society, not to be sometimes a Snob.

How hard it is to make an Englishman acknowledge that he is happy! Pendennis. Book ii. Chap. xxxi.