“It is singular how little we are inclined to think that others can speak ill-naturedly of us, and how angry and hurt we are when proof reaches us that they have done so.”

There are words which a man cannot resist from a woman, even though he knows them to be false.

I cannot hold with those who wish to put down the insignificant chatter of the world.

There are worse things than a lie… I have found… that it may be well to choose one sin in order that another may be shunned.

Fortune favors the brave; and the world certainly gives the most credit to those who are able to give an unlimited credit to themselves.

Don’t let love interfere with your appetite. It never does with mine.

I have no ambition to surprise my reader. Castles with unknown passages are not compatible with my homely muse.

The habit of writing clearly soon comes to the writer who is a severe critic to himself.

It is a comfortable feeling to know that you stand on your own ground. Land is about the only thing that can’t fly away.

But mad people never die. That’s a well-known fact. They’ve nothing to trouble them, and they live for ever.

It has now become the doctrine of a large clan of politicians that political honesty is unnecessary, slow, subversive of a man’s interests, and incompatible with quick onward movement.

There is no royal road to learning; no short cut to the acquirement of any art.

I ain’t a bit ashamed of anything.

Equality would be a heaven, if we could attain it.

A man’s love, till it has been chastened and fastened by the feeling of duty which marriage brings with it, is instigated mainly by the difficulty of pursuit.

They are gifted with the powers of being mothers, but not nursing mothers. Nature gives them bosoms for show, but not for use. So Lady Arabella had a wet-nurse.

Love is like any other luxury. You have no right to it unless you can afford it.

The more powerful and original a mind, the more it will incline towards the religion of solitude.

Men are so simple and so much inclined to obey immediate needs that a deceiver will never lack victims for his deceptions.

I was more inclined to think of it as “writer’s impatience”, and to follow Arthur Koestler’s dictum: “Soak; and wait.

I’m more inclined to linger in the science pages of ‘The Week’ magazine.

I am somehow inclined to move against this current, in search of what it might mean to be connected not just spiritually, but also vertically.

The people that are inclined to hate, are also inclined to be losers.

The dank night is sweeping down from the sky and the setting stars incline our heads to sleep.