Nobody holds a good opinion of a man who holds a low opinion of himself.

Nevertheless a certain class of dishonesty, dishonesty magnificent in its proportions, and climbing into high places, has become at the same time so rampant and so splendid that there seems to be reason for fearing...

Oh! do look at Miss Oriel’s bonnet the next time you see her. I cannot understand why it should be so, but I am sure of this—no English fingers could put together such a bonnet...

There is no happiness in love, except at the end of an English novel

Don’t let love interfere with your appetite. It never does with mine.

There is nothing in the world so difficult as that task of making up one’s mind. Who is there that has not longed that the power and privilege of selection among alternatives should be taken...

A small daily task, if it be really daily, will beat the labours of a spasmodic Hercules.

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.

Mary, it must be remembered, was very nearly of the same age as Frank; but, as I and others have so often said before, ‘Women grow on the sunny side of the wall.

(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.

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.

It was a beautiful summer afternoon, at that delicious period of the year when summer has just burst forth from the growth of spring; when the summer is yet but three days old, and all...

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.

But then the pastors and men of God can only be human,–cannot altogether be men of God; and so they have oppressed us, and burned us, and tortured us, and hence come to love palaces,...

The Church of England is the only church in the world that interferes neither with your politics nor your religion

A woman’s weapon is her tongue.

That I can read and be happy while I am reading, is a great blessing.

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.

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.

There is no such mischievous nonsense in all the world as equality. That is what father says. What men ought to want is liberty.

You must take the world as you find it, with a struggle to be something more honest than those around you. Phineas, as he preached himself this sermon, declared to himself that they who attempted...

Considering how much we are all given to discuss the characters of others, and discuss them often not in the strictest spirit of charity, it is singular how little we are inclined to think that...

They had not been long there before Lord Dumbello did group himself. ‘Fine day,’ he said, coming up and occupying the vacant position by Miss Grantly’s elbow.’We were driving to-day and we thought it rather...

If a cook can’t make soup between two and seven, she can’t make it in a week.

That fighting of a battle without belief is, I think, the sorriest task which ever falls to the lot of any man.

But who ever yet was offered a secret and declined it? Who at least ever declined a love secret? What sister could do so?