LOVE: A word properly applied to our delight in particular kinds of food; sometimes metaphorically spoken of the favorite objects of all our appetites.

Parents learn a lot from their children about coping with life.

A clever, ugly man every now and then is successful with the ladies, but a handsome fool is irresistible.

Bring in the bottled lightning, a clean tumbler, and a corkscrew.

You don’t carry in your countenance a letter of recommendation.

Love and scandal are the best sweeteners of tea.

Family life itself, that safest, most traditional, most approved of female choices, is not a sanctuary: It is, perpetually, a dangerous place.

I was condemned to be beheaded, or burnt, as the king pleased; and he was graciously pleased, from the great remains of his love, to choose the mildest sentence.

I have likened writing a novel to going on a journey, with some notion of the destination I will arrive at, but not the whole picture – which emerges gradually as a series of revelations,...

Any man may be in good spirits and good temper when he’s well dressed. There ain’t much credit in that.

Anything for the quick life, as the man said when he took the situation at the lighthouse.

Where the law ends tyranny begins.

English history is all about men liking their fathers, and American history is all about men hating their fathers and trying to burn down everything they ever did.

The two most engaging powers of an author are to make new things familiar, familiar things new.

The writer catches the changes of his mind on the hop. Growth is exciting; growth is dynamic and alarming. Growth of the soul, growth of the mind.

The men who learn endurance, are they who call the whole world, brother.

Judicious absence is a weapon.

It is not death, but dying, which is terrible.

It is impossible to repent of love. The sin of love does not exist.

There are many sham diamonds in this life which pass for real, and vice versa.

I never could have done what I have done without the habits of punctuality, order, and diligence, without the determination to concentrate myself on one subject at a time.

It’s my old girl that advises. She has the head. But I never own to it before her. Discipline must be maintained.

What’s vice today may be virtue, tomorrow.

Nothing succeeds, they say, like success. And certainly nothing fails like failure.

If modesty and candor are necessary to an author in his judgment of his own works, no less are they in his reader.

I think I’m drawn to writing about something which feels intense and important.

I only ask to be free. The butterflies are free.

Credit is a system whereby a person who can not pay gets another person who can not pay to guarantee that he can pay.

Commend a fool for his wit, or a rogue for his honesty and he will receive you into his favor.

A cruel story runs on wheels, and every hand oils the wheels as they run.

It is best to love wisely, no doubt: but to love foolishly is better than not to be able to love at all.

There are no signposts in the sea.

A person who can’t pay gets another person who can’t pay to guarantee that he can pay. Like a person with two wooden legs getting another person with two wooden legs to guarantee that he...

Make ’em laugh; make ’em cry; make ’em wait.

Great joy, especially after a sudden change of circumstances, is apt to be silent, and dwells rather in the heart than on the tongue.

One’s prime is elusive. You little girls, when you grow up, must be on the alert to recognize your prime at whatever time of your life it may occur. You must then live it to...

I never knew whether to pity or congratulate a man on coming to his senses.

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.

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.

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...

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.

Vices are sometimes only virtues carried to excess!