“Let a man be of what side he may in politics, unless he be much more of a partisan than a patriot, he will think it well that there should be some equity of division in the bestowal of crumbs of comfort.”

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.

I doubt whether any girl would be satisfied with her lover’s mind if she knew the whole of it.

Poverty, to be picturesque, should be rural. Suburban misery is as hideous as it is pitiable.

It is very hard, that necessity of listening to a man who says nothing

Many people talk much, and then very many people talk very much more.

In order for us to appreciate this world, we have to be a bit more honest, and I hope I do that.

The more unlived your life, the greater your death anxiety.

I don’t know which is more discouraging, literature or chickens.

To be considered stupid and to be told so is more painful than being called gluttonous, mendacious, violent, lascivious, lazy, cowardly: every weakness, every vice, has found its defenders, its rhetoric, its ennoblement and exaltation, but stupidity hasn’t.

Works of imagination should be written in very plain language; the more purely imaginative they are the more necessary it is to be plain.

I didn’t know much about my Native American ancestry, but as I got older I became more interested in it.

And though it is much to be a nobleman, it is more to be a gentleman.

Grief is not as heavy as guilt, but it takes more away from you.