“I am not at all the sort of person you and I took me for.”

The less one does, as I long ago observed, the less one can find time to do.

A fashionable wife! Oh! Never will I be anything so heartless! I have pictured for myself a far higher destiny than this. – Will it ever be more than a picture?

In spite of the honestest efforts to annihilate my I-ity, or merge it in what the world doubtless considers my better half, I still find myself a self-subsisting and alas! self-seeking me.

On earth the living have much to bear; the difference is chiefly in the manner of bearing, and my manner of bearing is far from being the best.

Homeopathy – an invention of the Father of Lies! I have tried it and found it wanting. I would swallow their whole doles medicine chest for sixpence, and be sure of finding myself neither better nor worse for it.

The longer one lives in this hard world motherless, the more a mother’s loss makes itself felt.

Cracked things often hold out as long as whole things; one takes so much better care of them!

Young children are such nasty little beasts!

Not a hundredth part of the thoughts in my head have ever been or ever will be spoken or written — as long as I keep my senses, at least.

I rely on the promise, God is kind to women, fools, and drunk people.

The only thing that makes one place more attractive to me than another is the quantity of heart I find in it.

How many precious things do we not already possess which others have not – have hardly an idea of! Let us enjoy these, then, and bless God that we are permitted to enjoy them, rather than importune His goodness with vain longings for more.

If they had said that the sun or the moon had gone out of the heavens, it could not have struck me with the idea of a more awful and dreary blank in creation than the words: Byron is dead!

All griefs, when there is no bitterness in them, are soothed down by time.

Youth is so insatiable of happiness, and has such sublimely insane faith in its own power to make happy and be happy!

The glittering baits of titles and honours are only for children and fools.

There was discover’d by me a fifth sort, which had near the thickness of the former, but they were almost twice as long. The first time bacteria were observed.

The 4th sort of creatures… which moved through the 3 former sorts, were incredibly small, and so small in my eye that I judged, that if 100 of them lay [stretched out] one by another, they would not equal the length of a grain of course Sand; and according to this estimate.

The methods it employs with such acumen, persistency, and secrecy are employed by all sorts of business men, from corner grocers up to bankers. If exposed, they are excused on the ground that this is business.

However I am still making the effort and it is conceivable that with the gap period of about 25 years of partially deluded thinking providing a sort of vacation my situation may be atypical.

Honesty is most important, and it’s difficult when you’re young and single and sort of figuring out your own life.

There’s a lot of fantasy about what Scotland is, and the shortbread tins and that sort of thing.

My father walked out on us when I was three months old, and my mum, well, she wasn’t the driven sort.

There’s one major difference between James Bond and me. He is able to sort out problems!