A man’s a man, But when you see a king, you see the work Of many thousand men.

A woman’s rank Lies in the fulness of her womanhood: Therein alone she is royal.

I don’t see how a man is to be good for much unless he has some one woman to love him dearly.

Plain women he regarded as he did the other severe facts of life, to be faced with philosophy and investigated by science.

I began … to watch with peculiar alarm lest what I called my philosophic estimate of the human lot in general, should be a mere prose lyric expressing my own pain and consequent bad temper.

Examining the world in order to find consolation is very much like looking carefully over the pages of a great book in order to find our own name. … Whether we find what we want or not, our preoccupation has hindered us from a true knowledge of the contents.

That modern sect of Flagellants who make a ritual of lashing — not themselves but — all their neighbours.

Everything comes to light, sooner or later. When God Almighty wills it, our secrets are found out.

Nothing is so good as it seems beforehand.

Gossip is a sort of smoke that comes from the dirty tobacco-pipes of those who diffuse it: it proves nothing but the bad taste of the smoker.

It is better – it shall be better with me because I have known you.

It is easy to say how we love new friends, and what we think of them, but words can never trace out all the fibers that knit us to the old.

I never had any preference for her, any more than I have a preference for breathing.

Bad literature of the sort called amusing is spiritual gin.

My childhood was full of deep sorrows – colic, whooping-cough, dread of ghosts, hell, Satan, and a Deity in the sky who was angry when I ate too much plumcake.

I like trying to get pregnant. I’m not so sure about childbirth.

No story is the same to us after a lapse of time; or rather we who read it are no longer the same interpreters.

Her heart lived in no cherished secrets of its own, but in feelings which it longed to share with all the world.

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

The memory has as many moods as the temper, and shifts its scenery like a diorama.

Every limit is a beginning as well as an ending.

Learning to love any one is like an increase of property – it increases care, and brings many new fears lest precious things should come to harm.

The beginning of an acquaintance whether with persons or things is to get a definite outline for our ignorance.

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

I think I dislike what I don’t like more than I like what I like.

I am not magnanimous enough to like people who speak to me without seeming to see me.

Those who trust us educate us.

Unlike the gold which needed nothing, and must be worshipped in close-locked solitude—which was hidden away from the daylight, was deaf to the song of birds, and started to no human tones—Eppie was a creature of endless claims and ever-growing desires, seeking and loving sunshine, and living sounds, and living movements; making trial of everything, with trust in new joy, and stirring the human kindness in all eyes that looked on her.

There is a pale shade of bribery which is sometimes called prosperity.

After all, the true seeing is within.

To act with doubleness towards a man whose own conduct was double, was so near an approach to virtue that it deserved to be called by no meaner name than diplomacy.

That’s what a man wants in a wife, mostly; he wants to make sure one fool tells him he’s wise.That’s what a man wants in a wife, mostly; he wants to make sure one fool tells him he’s wise.

To have in general but little feeling, seems to be the only security against feeling too much on any particular occasion.

Confound you handsome young fellows! you think of having it all your own way in the world. You don’t understand women. They don’t admire you half so much as you admire yourselves.

People glorify all sorts of bravery except the bravery they might show on behalf of their nearest neighbors.

Childhood has no forebodings, but then, it is soothed by no memories of outlived sorrow.

The troublesome ones in a family are usually either the wits or the idiots.

Some people did what their neighbors did so that if any lunatics were at large, one might know and avoid them.

Worldly faces, never look so worldly as at a funeral.

Every man who is not a monster, a mathematician, or a mad philosopher, is the slave of some woman or other.

In every parting there is an image of death.

There is hardly any contact more depressing to a young ardent creature than that of a mind in which years full of knowledge seem to have issued in a blank absence of interest or sympathy.

Genius … is necessarily intolerant of fetters.

Veracity is a plant of paradise, and the seeds have never flourished beyond the walls.

To manage men one ought to have a sharp mind in a velvet sheath.

With memory set smarting like a reopened wound, a man’s past is not simply a dead history, an outworn preparation of the present: it is not a repented error shaken loose from the life: it is a still quivering part of himself, bringing shudders and bitter flavors and the tinglings of a merited shame.

Life is measured by the rapidity of change, the succession of influences that modify the being.

Tis God gives skill, but not without men’s hands: he could not make Antonio Stradivarius violins without Antonio.

Hatred is like fire-it makes even light rubbish deadly.

A friend is one to whom one may pour out the contents of one’s heart, chaff and grain together, knowing that gentle hands will take and sift it, keep what is worth keeping, and with a breath of kindness, blow the rest away.

Tis what I love determines how I love.

Science is properly more scrupulous than dogma. Dogma gives a charter to mistake, but the very breath of science is a contest with mistake, and must keep the conscience alive.

I’ve been turning it over in after-dinner speeches, but it looks awkward—it’s not what people are used to—it wants a good deal of Latin to make it go down.

Breed is stronger than pasture.

One has to spend many years in learning how to be happy.

We could never have loved the earth so well if we had had no childhood in it.

Much of our waking experience is but a dream in the daylight.

Plainness has its peculiar temptations and vices quite as much as beauty.

The rich ate and drank freely, accepting gout and apoplexy as things that ran mysteriously in respectable families.

We must be willing to let go of the life we planned so as to have the life that is waiting for us.

The responsibility of tolerance lies with those who have the wider vision.

The finest eloquence is that which gets things done.

There is a great deal of unmapped country within us which would have to be taken into account in an explanation of our gusts and storms.

Human beings must have action; and they will make it if they cannot find it.

Renunciation remains sorrow, though a sorrow borne willingly.

I wonder if any other girl thinks her father the best man in the world!’ ‘Nonsense, child; you’ll think your husband better.’ ‘Impossible.

She was no longer wrestling with the grief, but could sit down with it as a lasting companion and make it a sharer in her thoughts.

As Celia bent over the paper, Dorothea put her cheek against her sister’s arm caressingly. Celia understood the action. Dorothea saw that she had been in the wrong, and Celia pardoned her. Since they could remember, there had been a mixture of criticism and awe in the attitude of Celia’s mind towards her elder sister. The younger had always worn a yoke, but is there any yoked creature without its private opinions?

We must not sit still and look for miracles; up and doing, and the Lord will be with thee. Prayer and pains, through faith in Christ Jesus, will do anything.

When death, the great reconciler, has come, it is never our tenderness that we repent of, but our severity.

You may try but you can never imagine what it is to have a man’s form of genius in you, and to suffer the slavery of being a girl.

You know nothing about Hope, that immortal, delicious maiden forever courted forever propitious, whom fools have called deceitful as if it were Hope that carried the cup of disappointment, whereas it is her deadly enemy.

Delicious autumn! My very soul is wedded to it, and if I were a bird, I would fly about the earth seeking the successive autumns.

I am not imposed upon by fine words; I can see what actions mean.

Falsehood is easy, truth so difficult.

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

So our lives glide on: the river ends we don’t know where, and the sea begins, and then there is no more jumping ashore.

If you would maintain the slightest belief in human heroism, you must never make a pilgrimage to see the hero.

Therefore, let Art always remind us of them, let us always have men ready to give the loving pains of a life to the faithful representing of commonplace things–men who see beauty in these commonplace things and delight in showing how kindly the light of heaven falls on them.

Art is the nearest thing to life; it is a mode of amplifying experience and extending our contact with our fellow men beyond the bounds of our personal lot.

Whether happiness may come or not, one should try and prepare one’s self to do without it.

Perhaps the most delightful friendships are those in which there is much agreement, much disputation, and yet more personal liking.

The only failure one should fear, is not hugging to the purpose they see as best.

That Spanish woman who lived three hundred years ago, was certainly not the last of her kind. Many Theresas have been born who found for themselves no epic life wherein there was a constant unfolding of far-resonant action; perhaps only a life of mistakes, the offspring of a certain spiritual grandeur ill-matched with the meanness of opportunity; perhaps a tragic failure which found no sacred poet and sank unwept into oblivion.

How is it that the poets have said so many fine things about our first love, so few about our later love? Are their first poems their best? Or are not those the best which come from their fuller thought, their larger experience, their deeper-rooted affections?

Love does not aim simply at the conscious good of the beloved object: it is not satisfied without perfect loyalty of heart; it aims at its own completeness.

Blameless people are always the most exasperating.

The most solid comfort one can fall back upon is the thought that the business of one’s life is to help in some small way to reduce the sum of ignorance, degradation and misery on the face of this beautiful earth.

When God makes His presence felt through us, we are like the burning bush: Moses never took any heed what sort of bush it was -he only saw the brightness of the Lord.

I think I should have no other mortal wants, if I could always have plenty of music. It seems to infuse strength into my limbs and ideas into my brain. Life seems to go on without effort, when I am filled with music.

We are all apt to believe what the world believes about us.

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

Among all forms of mistake, prophecy is the most gratuitous.

Opposition may become sweet to a man when he has christened it persecution.