A small daily task, if it be really daily, will beat the labours of a spasmodic Hercules.
What on earth could be more luxurious than a sofa, a book, and a cup of coffee?...Was ever anything so civil?
That I can read and be happy while I am reading, is a great blessing.
Nobody holds a good opinion of a man who holds a low opinion of himself.
Don't let love interfere with your appetite. It never does with mine.
To have her meals, and her daily walk, and her fill of novels, and to be left alone, was all that she asked of the gods.
The habit of reading is the only enjoyment in which there is no alloy; it lasts when all other pleasures fade.
She was as one who, in madness, was resolute to throw herself from a precipice, but to whom some remnant of sanity remained which forced her to seek those who would save her from herself.
And, above all things, never think that you're not good enough yourself. A man should never think that. My belief is that in life people will take you very much at your own reckoning.
There is no happiness in love, except at the end of an English novel.
Love is like any other luxury. You have no right to it unless you can afford it.
Of all needs a book has, the chief need is to be readable.
Above all else, never think you're not good enough.
There is no way of writing well and also of writing easily.
Words spoken cannot be recalled, and many a man and many a woman who has spoken a word at once regretted, are far too proud to express that regret.
Till we can become divine, we must be content to be human, lest in our hurry for change we sink to something lower.
I am not fit to marry. I am often cross, and I like my own way, and I have a distaste for men.
Book love... is your pass to the greatest, the purest, and the most perfect pleasure that God has prepared for His creatures.
One can only pour out of a jug that which is in it.
Romance is very pretty in novels, but the romance of a life is always a melancholy matter. They are most happy who have no story to tell.
Who would ever think of learning to live out of an English novel?
It is no good any longer having any opinion upon anything...
In this world things are beautiful only because they are not quite seen, or not perfectly understood. Poetry is precious chiefly because it suggests more than it declares.
The Church of England is the only church in the world that interferes neither with your politics nor your religion
Did you ever know a poor man made better by law or a lawyer!' said Bunce bitterly.
For there is no folly so great as keeping one's sorrows hidden.
The persons whom you cannot care for in a novel, because they are so bad, are the very same that you so dearly love in your life, because they are so good.
When a man gets into his head an idea that the public voice calls for him, it is astonishing how great becomes his trust in the wisdom of the public.
I like to have a plan," said Mr. Palliser. "And so do I," said his wife,--"if only for the sake of not keeping it.
A novelist's characters must be with him as he lies down to sleep, and as he wakes from his dreams. He must learn to hate them and to love them.
He was one of those men who, as in youth they are never very young, so in age are they never very old.
Conduct! Is conduct everything? One may conduct oneself excellently, and yet break one's heart.
I don't like anybody or anything," said Lucinda. Yes, you do;--you like horses to ride, and dresses to wear.
Throughout the world, the more wrong a man does, the more indignant is he at wrong done to him.
Wine is a dangerous thing, and should not be made the exponent of truth, let the truth be good as it may; but it has the merit of forcing a man to show his true colors.
Life is so unlike theory.
I have passed the period of a woman's life when as a woman she is loved; but I have have not outlived the power of loving.
You shall be my pet, and my poppet, and my dearest little duck all the days of your life.
He took such high ground that there was no getting on to it.
Her happiness, like that of most of us, was ever in the future,—never reached but always coming.
There are some people, if you can only get to learn the length of their feet, you can always fit them with shoes afterwards.
A man who desires to soften another man's heart, should always abuse himself. In softening a woman's heart, he should abuse her.
Though they were Liberals they were not democrats; nor yet infidels.
The greatest mistake any man ever made is to suppose that the good things of the world are not worth the winning.
The end of a novel, like the end of children’s dinner-party, must be made up of sweetmeats and sugar-plum
Those who depart must have earned such sorrow before it can be really felt.
The fight has been going on since...dominion in this world has found itself capable of sustentation by the exercise of fear as to the world to come.
Lovers with all the glories and all the graces are supposed to be plentiful as blackberries by girls of nineteen, but have been proved to be rare hothouse fruits by girls of twenty-nine.
There was very much in the whole affair of which he would not be proud as he led his bride to the altar;--but a man does not expect to get four thousand pounds a year for nothing.
 It has been the peculiarity and the marvel of this man’s power, that he has invested his puppets with a charm that has enabled him to dispense with human nature. )
(On Charles Dickens) It has been the peculiarity and the marvel of this man’s power, that he has invested his puppets with a charm that has enabled him to dispense with human nature.
: If an action is the right one, personal feelings must not be allowed to interfere. Of course I greatly like Mr Harding, but that is no reason for failing in my duty to those old men. )
(John Bold said): If an action is the right one, personal feelings must not be allowed to interfere. Of course I greatly like Mr Harding, but that is no reason for failing in my duty to those old men.
 was painfully afraid of a disagreement with any person in any subject....he felt horror at the thought of being made the subject of common gossip and public criticism. )
He (The warden) was painfully afraid of a disagreement with any person in any subject....he felt horror at the thought of being made the subject of common gossip and public criticism.
Of course he had committed forgery;--of course he had committed robbery. That, indeed, was nothing, for he had been cheating and forging and stealing all his life.
A woman's weapon is her tongue.
Men and women ain't lumps of sugar. They don't melt because the water is sometimes warm.
Must we be strangers, you and I, because there was a time in which we were almost more than friends?
Oh, that that old man in Westmoreland would die and be gathered to his fathers, now that he was full of years and ripe for the sickle! But there was no sign of death about the old man.
A man has usually to work through much mud before he gets his nugget.
If a husband be not master of his wife´s heart, he has no right to her fealty; if a wife ceases to love, she may cease to be true.
But women can bear anything better than desertion. Cruelty is bad, but neglect is worse than cruelty, and desertion worse even than neglect.
Now, Justinia, you are unfair.
Courtesty and cordiality are not only not the same, but they are incompatible. Why so? Courtesy is an effort, and cordiality is free.
That fighting of a battle without belief is, I think, the sorriest task which ever falls to the lot of any man.
It seems to me that if a man can so train himself that he may live honestly and die fearlessly, he has done about as much as is necessary.
Babbling may be a weakness, but to my thinking mystery is a vice.
As to happiness in this life it is hardly compatible with that diminished respect which ever attends the relinquishing of labour.
Few men do understand the nature of a woman’s heart till years have robbed such understanding of its value.
Love is involuntary. It does not often run in a yoke with prudence.
There is an aptness, a propriety, a fitness in these things which one can understand perhaps better than explain.
Her virtues were too numerous to describe, and not sufficiently interesting to deserve description.
Everything about her room betokened wealth; but she had put away the French novels, and had placed a Bible on a little table, not quite hidden, behind her own seat.
In former days the Earl had been a man quite capable of making himself disagreeable, and probably had not yet lost the power of doing so. Of all our capabilities this is the one which clings longest to us.
I sometimes think you despise poetry,' said Phineas. 'When it is false I do. The difficulty is to know when it is false and when it is true.
These leave-takings in novels are as disagreeable as they are in real life; not so sad, indeed, for they want the reality of sadness; but quite as perplexing, and generally less satisfactory.
There are men whose energies hardly ever carry them beyond looking for the thing they want.
He was not so anxious to prove himself right, as to be so.
Men who think much want to speak often,
Leave a chimney-sweep alone when you see him, Chiltern. Should he run against you, then remember that it is one of the necessary penalties of clean linen that it is apt to be soiled.
Let me tell you, Lady Glencora, that a faineant government is not the worst government that England can have. It has been the great fault of our politicians that they have all wanted to do something.
As man is never strong enough to take unmixed delight in good, so may we presume also that he cannot be quite so weak as to find perfect satisfaction in evil.
He has gone, Mamma,' she said, as she entered the breakfast-room. 'And now we'll go back to our work-a-day ways. It has been all Sunday for me the last six weeks.
He is no better than anybody else that I can see, and he is beginning to give himself airs,
A man captivated by wiles was only captivated for a time, whereas a man won by simplicity would be won forever - if he, himself, were worth the winning.
After all, then, she was not a clever woman,—not more clever than other women around her!
A sermon is not to tell you what you are, but what you ought to be, and a novel should tell you not what you are to get, but what you’d like to get.
Rest and quiet are the comforts of those who have been content to remain in obscurity.
Home to your own people. How nice! I have no people to go to. I have one sister, who lives with her husband at Riga. She is my only relation, and I never see her.
What on earth could be more luxurious than a sofa, a book, and a cup of coffee?
If a cook can't make soup between two and seven, she can't make it in a week.
Who is there that abstains from reading that which is printed in abuse of himself?
The rising in life of our familiar friends is, perhaps, the bitterest morsel of the bitter bread which we are called upon to eat in life.
He was not witty, nor did he deal in anecdotes.
Morning parties, as a rule, are failures. People never know how to get away from them gracefully.
There are moments in which stupid people say clever things, obtuse people say sharp things, and good-natured people say ill-natured things.
It is natural that the father should yearn for the son, while the son's feeling for the father is of a very much weaker nature.
Marriages are considered to be comme il faut. I
No one ever on seeing Mr Crawley took him to be a happy man, or a weak man, or an ignorant man, or a wise man.
Of one small circumstance that had occurred, he felt quite sure that Mr. Kennedy knew nothing.
Gentle reader, did you ever feel yourself snubbed? Did you ever, when thinking much of your own importance, find yourself suddenly reduced to a nonentity? Such was Eleanor's feeling now.
Mrs Grantly after her father's death. This matter, therefore, had been taken out of the warden's hands
