Acting is nothing more or less than playing. The idea is to humanize life.

In poor Rosamond’s mind there was not room enough for luxuries to look small in.

It is very hard to say the exact truth, even about your own immediate feelings – much harder than to say something fine about them which is not the exact truth.

Yes! Thank God; human feeling is like the mighty rivers that bless the earth: it does not wait for beauty—it flows with resistless force and brings beauty with it… There are few prophets in the...

He was unique to her among men because he’s impressed her as being not her admirer her superior. In some mysterious way he was becoming a part of her conscience as one woman who’s nature...

Love gives insight, Maggie, and insight often gives foreboding. Listen to me, let me supply you with books; do let me see you sometimes, be your brother and teacher, as you said at Lorton. It...

It is a narrow mind which cannot look at a subject from various points of view.

The sense of security more frequently springs from habit than from conviction, and for this reason it oftensubsists after such a change in the conditions as might have been expected to suggest alarm. The lapse...

It is never too late to become what you might have been

In every parting there is an image of death.

He was like the cock who thought the sun had risen to hear him crow

A blush is no language; only a dubious flag – signal which may mean either of two contradictories

Only those who know the supremacy of the intellectual life can understand the grief of one who falls from that serene activity into the absorbing soul-wasting struggle with worldly annoyances.

Different taste in jokes is a great strain on the affections.

There is no private life which is not determined by a wider public life

There is no private life which has not been determined by a wider public life.

Men outlive their love, but they don’t outlive the consequences of their recklessness.

It’s rather a strong check to one’s self-complacency to find how much of one’s right doing depends on not being in want of money.

Our dead are never dead to us, until we have forgotten them.

The existence of insignificant people has very important consequences in the world. It can be shown to affect the price of bread and the rate of wages, to call forth many evil tempers from the...

Even when she was speaking, her soul was in prayer reposing on an unseen support.

Her anger said, as anger is apt to say, that God was with her— that all heaven, though it were crowded with spirits watching them, must be on her side.

If a man has a capacity for great thoughts, he is likely to overtake them before he is decrepit.

I suppose it’s the name: there’s a deal in the name of a tune.

The sense of an entailed disadvantage — the deformed foot doubtfully hidden by the shoe, makes a restlessly active spiritual yeast, and easily turns a self-centered, unloving nature into an Ishmaelite. But in the rarer...

Ignorance is not so damnable as humbug, but when it prescribes pills it may happen to do more harm

The best augury of a man’s success in his profession is that he thinks it the finest in the world

Miss Brooke had that kind of beauty which seems to be thrown into relief by poor dress.

There’s no disappointment in memory, and one’s exaggerations are always on the good side.

Boots and shoes are the greatest trouble of my life. Everything else one can turn and turn about, and make old look like new; but there’s no coaxing boots and shoes to look better than...

[I]t is very hard to say the exact truth, even about your own immediate feelings much harder than to say something fine about them which is not the exact truth.

Rome – the city of visible history, where the past of a whole hemisphere seems moving in funeral procession with strange ancestral images and trophies gathered from afar.

Just as I am watching a tongue of blue flame rising in the fire, and my lamp is burning low, the horrible contraction will begin in my chest. I shall only have time to reach...

Those who trust us educate us.

We learn words by rote, but not their meaning; that must be paid for with our life-blood, and printed in the subtle fibres of our nerves.

It is surely better to pardon too much, than to condemn too much.

Favourable Chance, I fancy, is the god of all men who follow their own devices instead of obeying a law they believe in. Let even a polished man of these days get into a position...

A man never lies with more delicious languor under the influence of a passion than when he has persuaded himself that he shall subdue it to-morrow.

Animals are such agreeable friends – they ask no questions, they pass no criticisms

But what we call our despair is often only the painful eagerness of unfed hope

Life began with waking up and loving my mother’s face.

For what we call illusions are often, in truth, a wider vision of past and present realities –a willing movement of a man’s soul with the larger sweep of the world’s forces –a movement towards...

That farewell kiss which resembles greeting, that last glance of love which becomes the sharpest pang of sorrow.

Each thought is a nail that is driven In structures that cannot decay; And the mansion at last will be given To us as we build it each day.

Our virtues are dearer to us the more we have had to suffer for them. It is the same with our children. All profound affection entertains a sacrifice. Our thoughts are often worse than we...

Abroad, that large home of ruined reputations.

A supreme love, a motive that gives a sublime rhythm to a woman’s life, and exalts habit into partnership with the soul’s highest needs, is not to be had where and how she wills.

But let the wise be warned against too great readiness at explanation: it multiplies the sources of mistake, lengthening the sum for reckoners sure to go wrong.

Falsehood is so easy, truth so difficult….Examine your words well, and you will find that even when you have no motive to be false, it is a very hard thing to say the exact truth,...

What could two men, so different from each other, see in this “brown patch”, as Mary called hereself? It was certainly not her plainness that attracted them (and let all plain young ladies be warned...