There is no happiness in love, except at the end of an English novel.
Romance is very pretty in novels, but the romance of a life is always a melancholy matter. They are most happy who have no story to tell.
I sometimes think you despise poetry,’ said Phineas. ‘When it is false I do. The difficulty is to know when it is false and when it is true.
A small daily task, if it be really daily, will beat the labours of a spasmodic Hercules.
(On Charles Dickens) It has been the peculiarity and the marvel of this man’s power, that he has invested his puppets with a charm that has enabled him to dispense with human nature.
The Church of England is the only church in the world that interferes neither with your politics nor your religion
The more she was absolutely in need of external friendship, the more disposed was she to reject it, and to declare to herself that she was prepared to stand alone in the world.
Wars about trifles are always bitter, especially among neighbours. When the differences are great, and the parties comparative strangers, men quarrel with courtesy. What combatants are ever so eager as two brothers?
There is, perhaps, no greater hardship at present inflicted on mankind in civilised and free countries than the necessity of listening to sermons.
That I can read and be happy while I am reading, is a great blessing.
It is probable that Tom Towers considered himself the most powerful man in Europe; and so he walked on from day to day, studiously striving to look a man, but knowing within his breast that he was a god.
That fighting of a battle without belief is, I think, the sorriest task which ever falls to the lot of any man.
She was as one who, in madness, was resolute to throw herself from a precipice, but to whom some remnant of sanity remained which forced her to seek those who would save her from herself.
Nobody holds a good opinion of a man who holds a low opinion of himself.
The cigar has been smoked out, and we are the ashes.
A novelist’s characters must be with him as he lies down to sleep, and as he wakes from his dreams. He must learn to hate them and to love them.
Don’t let love interfere with your appetite. It never does with mine.
The persons whom you cannot care for in a novel, because they are so bad, are the very same that you so dearly love in your life, because they are so good.
Poor Mr. Smith, having been so rudely dragged from his high horse, was never able to mount it again, and completed the lecture in a manner not at all comfortable to himself.
There is no such mischievous nonsense in all the world as equality. That is what father says. What men ought to want is liberty.
But who ever yet was offered a secret and declined it? Who at least ever declined a love secret? What sister could do so?
And, above all things, never think that you’re not good enough yourself. A man should never think that. My belief is that in life people will take you very much at your own reckoning.
There are things that will not have themselves buried and put out of sight, as though they had never been.
Mary, it must be remembered, was very nearly of the same age as Frank; but, as I and others have so often said before, ‘Women grow on the sunny side of the wall.
The habit of reading is the only enjoyment in which there is no alloy it lasts when all other pleasures fade.
No man thinks there is much ado about nothing when the ado is about himself.
Nobody holds a good opinion of a man who has a low opinion of himself.
Nobody holds a good opinion of a man who has a low opinion of himself.
In these days a man is nobody unless his biography is kept so far posted up that it may be ready for the national breakfast-table on the morning after his demise.
Marvelous is the power which can be exercised, almost unconsciously, over a company, or an individual, or even upon a crowd by one person gifted with good temper, good digestion, good intellects, and good looks.
It may almost be a question whether such wisdom as many of us have in our mature years has not come from the dying out of the power of temptation, rather than as the results of thought and resolution.