“I am ready to obey as a child; :;but, not being a child, I think I ought to have a reason.”

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.

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.

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

Any one prominent in affairs can always see when a man may steal a horse and when a man may not look over a hedge.

Nothing surely is as potent as a law that may not be disobeyed. It has the force of the water drop that hollows the stone.

It is a grand thing to rise in the world. The ambition to do so is the very salt of the earth. It is the parent of all enterprise, and the cause of all improvement.

Those who have courage to love should have courage to suffer.