“The offhand decision of some commonplace mind high in office at a critical moment influences the course of events for a hundred years.”

It appears that ordinary men take wives because possession is not possible without marriage, and that ordinary women accept husbands because marriage is not possible without possession.

Some women’s love of being loved is insatiable; and so, often, is their love of loving; and in the last case they may find that they can’t give it continuously to the chamber-officer appointed by the bishop’s license to receive it.

We colour and mould according to the wants within us whatever our eyes bring in.

Beauty lay not in the thing, but in what the thing symbolized.

That one true heart was left behind! What feeling do we ever find, to equal among human kind, a dog’s fidelity!

The first cause worked automatically like a somnambulist, and not reflectively like a sage.

The resolution to avoid an evil is seldom framed till the evil is so far advanced as to make avoidance impossible.

Women are so strange in their influence that they tempt you to misplaced kindness.

When women are secret they are secret indeed; and more often then not they only begin to be secret with the advent of a second lover.

It was terribly beautiful to Tess today, for since her eyes last fell upon it she had learnt that the serpent hisses where the sweet birds sing.

Pessimism is playing the sure game. You cannot lose at it; you may gain. It is the only view of life in which you can never be disappointed. Having reckoned what to do in the worst possible circumstances, when better arise, as they may, life becomes child’s play.

Time changes everything except something within us which is always surprised by change.

It was the touch of the imperfect upon the would-be perfect that gave the sweetness, because it was that which gave the humanity.

That it would always be summer and autumn, and you always courting me, and always thinking as much of me as you have done through the past summertime!

The perfect woman, you see [is] a working-woman; not an idler; not a fine lady; but one who [uses] her hands and her head and her heart for the good of others.

I wish I had never been born–there or anywhere else.

My father confused me. From the ages of one to seven, I thought my name was Jesus Christ!

I knew that when I left there at the age of 18, I wouldn’t be back. And it was common knowledge among all the people there that when you graduate from high school here, you go to college or go get a job or something and do it on your own.

What sort of an age is this where a man becomes one’s enemy only when his back is turned?

One of the things you realize about gettin older is that not everybody is goin to get older with you.

Oh, for the years I have not lived, but only dreamed of living.

I just say the moral out of my life is don’t quit at age 65, maybe your boat hasn’t come in yet. Mine hadn’t.

I was sixty-six years old. I still had to make a living. I looked at my social security check of 105 dollars and decided to use that to try to franchise my chicken recipe. Folks had always liked my chicken.

When the venerable pontiff’s hour has come, a Roman of good age shall be elected, of whom it will be said that he dishonored his throne though he held it long, with virtuous acts.