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

The triumphal-procession-air which, in our manners and customs, is given to marriage at the outset – that singing of Te Deum before the battle has begun.

When one has been threatened with a great injustice, one accepts a smaller as a favour.

The surest way to get a thing in this life is to be prepared for doing without it, to the exclusion even of hope.

It is sad and wrong to be so dependent for the life of my life on any human being as I am on you; but I cannot by any force of logic cure myself at this date, when it has become second nature.

Instead of boiling up individuals into the species, I would draw a chalk circle round every individuality, and preach to it to keep within that, and preserve and cultivate its identity.

People who are so dreadfully “devoted” to their wives are so apt, from mere habit, to get devoted to other people’s wives as well.

Never does one feel oneself so utterly helpless as in trying to speak comfort for great bereavement.

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.

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

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.