Oh the nerves, the nerves; the mysteries of this machine called man! Oh the little that unhinges it, poor creatures that we are!

A good face they say, is a letter of recommendation. O Nature, Nature, why art thou so dishonest, as ever to send men with these false recommendations into the World!

The rare pleasure of being seen for what one is, compensates for the misery of being it.

The loss of liberty which must attend being a wife was of all things the most horrible to my imagination.

I’m always amazed by writers who tell me they plan everything at the beginning. I feel their writing days must be very bland.

It was one of those March days when the sun shines hot and the wind blows cold: when it is summer in the light, and winter in the shade.

Dignity, and even holiness too, sometimes, are more questions of coat and waistcoat than some people imagine.

We are as liable to be corrupted by books, as by companions.

Petty laws breed great crimes.

An evil person is like a dirty window, they never let the light shine through.

Among the many problems which beset the novelist, not the least weighty is the choice of the moment at which to begin his novel.

Whatever I have tried to do in life, I have tried with all my heart to do it well; whatever I have devoted myself to, I have devoted myself completely; in great aims and in...

Sow an act and you reap a habit. Sow a habit and you reap a character. Sow a character and you reap a destiny.

Guilt has very quick ears to an accusation.

Art and religion first; then philosophy; lastly science. That is the order of the great subjects of life, that’s their order of importance.

Kindnesses are easily forgotten; but injuries! — what worthy man does not keep those in mind?

Vices are sometimes only virtues carried to excess!

Great men are seldom over-scrupulous in the arrangement of their attire.

There is perhaps no surer mark of folly, than to attempt to correct natural infirmities of those we love.

The human mind can bear plenty of reality but not too much intermittent gloom.

Tis this desire of bending all things to our own purposes which turns them into confusion and is the chief source of every error in our lives.

I’m not very interested in charting a day-to-day familiar reality. I’m always looking for territory in which to explore the BIG subjects, the life-or-death stories.

Electric communication will never be a substitute for the face of someone who with their soul encourages another person to be brave and true.

Do you spell it with a “V” or a “W”?’ inquired the judge. ‘That depends upon the taste and fancy of the speller, my Lord’.

Without adversity a person hardly knows whether they are honest or not.

Take hope from the heart of man and you make him a beast of prey.

Bravery never goes out of fashion.

Nothing shows up the difference between the things said or read, so much as the daily experience of it.

The age of chivalry is past. Bores have succeeded to dragons.

And I don’t like books which are full of name dropping.

Now, in reality, the world have paid too great a compliment to critics, and have imagined them to be men of much greater profundity then they really are.

All my pupils are the creme de la creme. Give me a girl of an impressionable age, and she is mine for life.

Millions long for immortality who don’t know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon.

Let us be moral. Let us contemplate existence.

That sort of half sigh, which, accompanied by two or three slight nods of the head, is pity’s small change in general society.

There is not in the universe a more ridiculous, nor a more contemptible animal, than a proud clergyman.

And there isn’t any way that one can get rid of the guilt of having a nice body by saying that one can serve society with it, because that would end up with oneself as...

If books were Persian carpets, one would not look only at the outer side. because it is the stitch that makes a carpet wear, gives it its life and bloom.

Perhaps, all writers walk such a line. In general – as we all do in our dreams – I believe I put something of myself into all the characters in my novels, male as well...

Cows are my passion. What I have ever sighed for has been to retreat to a Swiss farm, and live entirely surrounded by cows – and china.

He had but one eye and the pocket of prejudice runs in favor of two.

When children are doing nothing, they are doing mischief.

Familiarity is a magician that is cruel to beauty but kind to ugliness.

Dinner was made for eating, not for talking.

I worshipped dead men for their strength, forgetting I was strong.

There are strings in the human heart that had better not be vibrated.

I have always had West Highland terriers.

The world have payed too great a compliment to critics, and have imagined them men of much greater profundity than they really are.

One should only see a psychiatrist out of boredom.

Love’s a disease. But curable.