"The truth is, the inhabitants of that languid and luxurious city wanted some little variety ; and the minister (your great men have each their weak point) supported a favourite actress in the range of first-rate characters in the Opera — supported her against the united musical opinion of Naples. One night she sang worse than ever ; and the next morning half the city rose up, demanding liberty and a new prima donna. A body of the lazzaroni also insisted on a lower price for lemonade, for the revolutionary movement was not serious enough for macaroni."

"A new acquaintance was like a new book — and, as in the case of the book, it must be confessed she often arrived very quickly at the end."

"Confidence is its own security."

"Essays are written on causes — they might be more pithily turned on consequences."

"We ask for miracles : is not our own blindness a perpetual miracle ? We live amid the blessings that Christianity has diffused through the smallest occurrences of our daily life ; — we feel hourly within us that pining for some higher state, whose promise is in the Gospel; — our weakness daily forces us to look around for support ; — we admit the perfection of the Saviour's moral code; — we see the mighty voice of prophecy, that spoke aloud of old upon the mountains, working year by year their wonderful fulfilment, — and yet we believe not, or, if we believe, we delay acting upon that belief."

"[From Lady Mandeville]: I always think national costumes invented for the express advantage of travellers."

"Strange that people should use so many more words than their intelligence needs !"

"Only those who have lived weeks and months in, as it were, a moral desert, among beings with whom they had not a feeling or a thought in common, with only a cold and comfortless knowledge of superiority to console them for being utterly unappreciated — who have felt words rise to the lip, and then checked them from a conviction that they would not be comprehended — they, and they alone, can enter into the pleasure of speaking and being understood, and making conversation a medium not only to express wants, but ideas."

"We have no right to expect more from others than we ourselves are inclined to give. If we were to love every one we meet, the very nature of love would be destroyed. Convenience, not affection, is the bond of society. The world is often taxed with falsehood, when, in reality, we should blame our own expectations. Courtesy from our acquaintance, kindness from our friends, attachment from those who make the small circle we love, is all we have a right to expect — and in nine cases out of ten it is what we really experience."

"It is the unhappy love — the betrayed, or the unrequited — that shrouds itself in silence. But in the girl, young and affectionate, out of the fulness of the heart the mouth speaketh."

"Our first love-letter — it is an epoch in our life — a task equally delightful and difficult. No lover ever yet addressed his mistress, and no mistress ever yet addressed her lover, without beginning the gentle epistle some dozen times at least. There is so much to be said, and which no words seem exactly to say — the dread of saying too much is so nicely balanced by the fear of saying too little. Hope borders on presumption, and fear on reproach. One epithet is too cold — another we are scarcely entitled to use. Timidity and tenderness get in each other's way. The letter is sent, and immediately a thousand things are recollected — those, too, we were most anxious to write — and every sentence that occurs is precisely the one we wish we had omitted. The epistle is opened and read — with a little wonder, most probably not a little vexation, at its constrained style. True it is that no first love-letter ever yet gave satisfaction to either writer or reader. Its delight is another question."

"Ill news travel fast ; and Mrs. Arundel's marriage was like the sun in the child's riddle, for it went "round each house, and round each house, and looked in at every window.”"

"How easy it is to be generous about the inconstancy which in our secret self we hold to be impossible !"

"The more imaginative love is, the more superstitious it must be : the belief of omens being past — that desire of the unattainable so inherent in our nature, and which shows itself in so many shapes — now, as far as regards prophecy, it takes another form, and calls itself presentiment ; …"

"It is a common thing to jest at the rapid growth and exaggeration of girlish friendships. Strange, how soon we forget our youth ! True, they do not last. What very simple, serene, and sincere sentiment in this world ever did ? We have soon scarcely affection enough for even our nearest and dearest. Instead of laughing at such early attachment, we might rather grieve over the loss of the unsuspicious kindliness that gushed forth in feelings now gone from us for ever."

"But she forgot that when the very gentle do nerve themselves for action, it is under some strong and sudden impulse, and they then act usually in opposition to the whole of their previous bearing. Opposition is too new not to be carried into obstinacy. It has cost them so much to form a resolution, that they adhere to it with all the pertinacity felt for an uncommon and valuable acquisition."

"Experience teaches, it is true ; but she never teaches in time. Each event brings its lesson, and the lesson is remembered ; but the same event never occurs again."

"The merit we are the first to discover, almost seems as if it were our own, and that, like a newly found country, it was to bear the name of the first finder."

"There are two motives to every action, and two versions of every story."

"The great happiness-secret, after all, is division. How dare we, in this vain, fleeting world, concentrate our whole freight of interest in one frail bark ?"

"But Life's great circumstances turn on its small ones. Could we see into the causes of all important events, we should often find that some small and insignificant trifle has been, as it were, their fate."

"Curious, that of the past our memory retains so little of what is peculiarly its own. The book we have read, the sight we have seen, the speech we have heard, — these are the things to which it recurs, and that rise up within it. We remember but what can be put to present use. It is very extraordinary how little we recollect of hopes, fears, motives, and all the shadowy tribe of feelings ; or indeed, how little we think over the past at all. Memory is that mirror wherein a man "beholdeth himself, and goeth his way, and straightway forgetteth what manner of man he was. We are reproached with forgetting others : we forget ourselves a thousand times more. We remember what we hear, see, and read, often accurately : not so with what we felt — that is faint and uncertain in its record. Memory is the least egotistical of all our faculties."

"[A gastronome ought to fast sometimes on principle]; We appreciate no pleasures unless we are occasionally debarred from them. Restraint is the golden rule of enjoyment."

"A patriot might take his best lesson of disinterestedness from feminine affection."

"[From Lady Mandeville]: In order to give an idea of beauty unspoiled by art, the heroine's hat falls off, and her hair falls down, while she looks lovely in dishevelled ringlets. Now, they quite forget two things : first, that though the hat may come off, it is by no means a necessary consequence that the hair should come down too ; and, secondly, if it did, the damsel would only look an untidy fright."

"[From Edward Lorraine]: I do not go quite the length of the modern philosopher, who asserts that our nature is not wholly sophisticated so long as we retain our juvenile predilection in favour of apple-dumpling; but I do think that the affection which clings to the home of our childhood — the early love which lingers round the flowers we have sown, the shrubs we have planted — is, though a simple, a sweet and purifying influence on the character. I cannot help thinking, that the drooping bough, the fairy-like rose, lend something of their own grace to one who has loved them and made them her companions."

"The difference that there is between a woman's love and a man's ! His passion may lead him, in the first instance, to act in opposition to opinion — but its influence is only suspended ; and soon a sneer or a censure wounds his pride and weakens his love. A woman's heart, on the contrary, reposes more on itself ; and a fault found in the object of her attachment is resented as an injury : she is angered, not altered."

"How little do even our most intimate friends know of us ! There is an excitement about intense misery which is its support : light sufferings spring to the lips in words, and to the eyes in tears; but there is a pride in deep passion which guards its feelings from even the shadow of a surmise."

"[From Madame de Ligne]: Who but an Englishman would have thought of telling a woman she would not be listened to ?"

"The principal events in life are generally unexpected."

"The proof that keen feelings are incompatible with happiness is shown in the fact, that the young commit suicide, the old never."

"Perhaps, from an innate desire of justification, sorrow always exaggerates itself. Memory is quite one of Job's friends; and the past is ever ready to throw its added darkness on the present."

"[From Edward Lorraine]: I thank you for reinforcing my favourite theory, which maintains that a love of talking is the great feature of the present time. Steam is not half so much its characteristic as speechifying.""

"True it is, that we judge of others' actions by our own — but then we do not make the same allowances."

"[From Lord Mandeville]: Wisdom is only knowledge well applied."

"Jealousy ought to be tragic, to save it from being ridiculous."

"There is a most characteristic difference in the way a man and a woman take to introduce a desired topic : the one, like a knight, claps spurs to his steed, and rides straight into the field ; the other, like an Indian, fights behind cover, and watches her opportunity ; the knight often misses the enemy, the Indian never."

"How odd it is, that any secret or anxiety of which we are ourselves aware, we immediately think every one else suspects !"

"If it were not for romance, reality would be unbearable : nevertheless, they are very different things."

"How very satisfactory those discussions must be, where each party retains their own opinion !"

"Strange, the affection which clings to inanimate objects — objects which cannot even know our love ! But it is not return that constitutes the strength of an attachment."

"Time, which we have no means of reckoning, is so dreadfully long."

"Anticipation is a bad sleeping draught."

"Even in the very worst of situations, no woman is quite insensible to her personal attractions, or would willingly look worse than she can help."

"We waste a great deal of thought."

"There are a great many false things in this world, but none are so false as appearances."

"Strange it is that people (unless in the way of ostentation) never value the blessings they possess. But if life has a happiness over which the primeval curse has passed and harmed not, it is the early and long enduring affection of blood and habit."

"Sculpture never seems to me like the representation of human life: its forms — pale, pure, and cold — have the shape, not the likeness of our nature. I always personify a spirit as a statue. Paintings, however idealised as to beauty, still give the bright eye, the rosy cheek, the glossy hair, we see daily. Portraits are but the mirrors of lovely countenances. Sculpture is the incarnation of beings whose state seems higher, because calmer, than our own. The divinities of Greece owed half their divinity to the noble repose with which their sculptors invested them. The characteristic of the picture is passion — that of the statue power."

"Domestic dissension is the sacrilege of the heart."

"… when a mind is once made up, it is very tiresome to have to unmake it."