"We do not seem sufficiently aware of the beauty of uniformity, or else it is interfered with by our personal vanity. The truth is, that general taste is always good ; because, before it becomes general, it has been compared and corrected : but as for individual taste, the less we have of it the better."

"Illusions are the magic of real life, and the forfeit of future pain is paid for present pleasure."

"[From Edward Lorraine]: I think that either man's or woman's character stand in a relative position to each other, like the covered statue of Isis, whose veil mortal hand hath not raised. We never see each other but through the false mediums of passion, or affection, or indifference — all three equally bad for observation."

"What he said of heads may also be said of experience —there is a large stock on hand: but somehow or other, nobody's experience ever suits us except our own."

"People take a traveller's understanding their language as a personal compliment."

"[From Mr Morland]: It is very difficult to persuade people to be happy in any fashion but their own. We run after novelty in little things — we shrink from it in great. We make the yoke of circumstance a thousand times heavier, by so unwillingly accommodating ourselves to the inevitable."

"Much of the trouble we give ourselves is quite unnecessary — it matters very little where a good appetite finds its dinner. However, trouble is, like virtue, its own reward."

"[From Edward Lorraine]: Imagination is to love what gas is to the balloon — that which raises it from earth."

"We differ from our ancestors in many things — in none more than in cases of sentiment. Formerly, it was your susceptible school-girl, "your novel-reading miss" — now, women only grow romantic after forty. Your young beauty calculates the chances of her Grecian nose, her fine eyes, and her exquisite complexion — your young heiress dwells on the claims of her rent-roll, or the probabilities of her funded property : it is their mothers who run away — their aunts who marry handsome young men without a shilling. Well, the prudence of youth is very like selfishness, and the romance of age very like folly."

"[From Mr Morland]: Love is followed by disappointment, admiration by mortification, and obligation by ingratitude."

"Alas ! oblivion is our moral death, and forgetfulness is the second grave which closes over the dead."

"[From Lady Mandeville]: There are two readings of content — and mine would be, monotony."

"[From Edward Lorraine]: But in literature people ought not to be allowed to follow a fashion. A new idea is no sooner started, now-a-days, than it is run even to death. I think the good old Elizabethan plan of monopolies should be revived in favour of literature. An eminent author, in our time, is a species of mental Alexander; he erects a vast empire, out of which fifty small powers parcel little kingdoms and minor principalities."

"[From Mr Morland]: … every man has his motive. One man wants money, the next power, the third title; a fourth desires place for its distinction, a fifth for its influence; a sixth desires popular applause ; a seventh piques himself upon his eloquence, and will display it; an eighth upon his judgment, to which he will have you defer ; a ninth is governed by his wife ; a tenth adopts the opinions of his club ; the eleventh those of a favourite author; the twelfth acts upon some old prejudice which he calls a principle. There are a round dozen of motives for you."

"[From Edward Lorraine]: Nothing is so fortunate for mankind as its diversity of opinion: if we all thought alike — with you, for example — there would at once be an end to all mutual assistance and improvement."

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

"[From Mr Morland]: The subject on which we centre our whole attention acquires an undue importance. Devotion to one single object necessarily narrows the mind. The indifference of others is matter of angry surprise ; and the benefactor of mankind would often fain become its tyrant. We are violent in proportion to our self-exaggeration."

"[From Mr Morland]: … the pleasures of travelling seem to me quite ideal. I dislike having the routine of my existence disarranged — I dislike early rising — I dislike had dinners — I dread damp beds — I like new books — I like society — I respect my cook, and love my arm-chair ; so I will travel through Italy in a chapter —"

"Great misfortunes have at least their dignity to support them ; but the many and small miseries of life, how they do gall and wear away the spirit !"

"[From Edward Lorraine]: At present we avoid warfare — ‘the good swords rust ;' but we are not more peaceably disposed than our ancestors — look at the gauntlet to be run by a successful author. Ingenuity is racked for abuse, and language for its expression : every body takes his success as a personal affront. I think the late invention of steel pens quite characteristic of the age."

"The first records of our young world were those of tears and blood ; its last records will be those of tears and blood also."

"How duly do we appreciate the merit we ourselves discover and direct !"

"… imagination is as useful in keeping affection alive as the eastern monarch's fairy ring was in keeping alive his conscience."

"[From Lord Mandeville]: From religion, ..., they will learn the only true lesson of equality — the conviction that our destinies are not in our own hands ; they will see that no situation in life is without its share of suffering ; — and this perpetual reference to a higher power ought equally to teach the rich humility, and the poor devotion."

"People and places are usually flattered in their portraits."

"[From Mr Morland]: {of Wordsworth} —he is the most poetical of philosophers. Strange, that a man can be so great a poet, and yet deficient in what are poetry's two grand requisites, — imagination and passion."

"Rome, once the mistress, is now the caravanseray of the world."

"[From Mr Morland]: I never knew any debatable point not maintained on both sides by unanswerable arguments ; …"

"Strange, that one whose opinion we neither respect nor admit should yet have power to wound ! — not stranger, though, than that it should have power to please. One may live to be indifferent to everything but opinion. We may reject friendship which has often deceived us; renounce love, whose belief, once found false, leaves us atheists of the heart : we may turn from pleasures which have palled — from employments which have become wearisome ; but the opinion of our kind, whether for good or for evil, still retains its hold; that once broken, every social and moral tie is broken too — the prisoner then may go to his solitary cell — the anchorite to his hermitage — the last link with life and society is rent in twain."

"Any great change is like cold water in winter — one shrinks from the first plunge; and a lover may be excused who shivers a little at the transmigration into a husband."

"[From Mr Morland]: ... the young man who acts in early life contrary to his feelings, will, in after years, act contrary to his principles of right."

"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."

"[From Mr Morland]: That a peculiar temperament is required for poetry, no one will deny; but what produces that temperament ? — scenery and circumstances certainly do not. I, for one, am content to leave the question with the longitude and the philosopher's stone."

"We travel for many acquirements — health, information, amusement, notoriety, &c. &c. The advantages of each of these acquisitions have been eloquently set forth from the days of Ulysses, who travelled to seek his native land, to those of the members of the club who travel to seek anything else."

"What is Genius but an altar richly wrought in fine gold, and placed in the most sacred and glorious part of the marble temple ? but there the living victim is offered in sacrifice, and the wreath of flowers left to wither."

"[From Mr Morland]: Artists are generally an enthusiastic, unworldly race ; jealous of praise, as the enthusiastic almost always are ; and exaggerating trifles, as the unworldly always do. But society is no school for the artist : the colours of his mind, like those of his pictures, lose their brilliancy by being exposed to the open air."

"— it makes good the observation that a bystander sees more of the game than those who are playing ; —"

"[From Mr Morland]: Genius is the Hannibal of the mind. The Alps, which to the common observer seemed insurmountable, served only to immortalise his passage. The imagination is to work with its own resources ; the more it is thrown on them, the better."

"But pleasures are always most delightful when we look back upon, or forward to them : …"

"[From Edward Lorraine]: Alas ! we talk of their vanity ; we forget that, in doling forth the careless commendation, or as careless sneer, we are bestowing but the passing thought of a moment to that which has been the work of an existence. Truly genius, like virtue, ought to be its own reward ; but it cannot. Bitter though the toil, and vain the hope, human exertion must still look to human approbation."

"It passed as weeks do when all is hurry, confusion, and packing — when there are a thousand things to do, and another thousand left undone. It is amazing how long such a week seems — events lengthen the time they number : it is the daily and quiet round of usual occupation that passes away so quickly ; it is the ordinary week which exclaims, "Good gracious ! it is Saturday again.”"

"[Between Edward Lorraine and Mr Morland]: Memory is a much stranger faculty than hope. Hope I can understand ; I can divide its mixture of desire and fear ; I know when I wish for any thing — and hope is the expectation of wishing. But memory is unfathomable and indefinite. Why do we so often forget what we the most desire to remember ? and why, without any volition of our own, do we suddenly recall things, people, places, we know not why or wherefore ? Sometimes that very remembrance will haunt us like a ghost, and quite as causelessly, which at another time is a blank. Alas for love ! whose very existence depends on a faculty over which we have so little control."

"[From Mr Morland]: Of all false assertions that ever went into the world under the banner of a great name and the mail-armour of a well-turned phrase, Locke's comparison of the mind to a blank sheet of paper appears to me among the most untrue."

"You do not love if there is not some nameless fascination in the lightest act. What would be absurd, ridiculous, nay disagreeable, in another, has in the beloved a fairy spell. Love's is the true alchemy, turning what it touches to gold."

"Women in black gowns, and drab-coloured shawls hung upon their shoulders as if they were pegs in a passage — men in coats something between a great-coat and a frock — strings of hackney-coaches which moved not — stages which drove along with an empty, rattling sound — and carts laden with huge stones, now filled Piccadilly."

"No thoroughly occupied man was ever yet very miserable."

"[From Edward Lorraine]: Enthusiasm is the royal road to success. Now, call it fame, vanity — what you will — how strange and how strong is the feeling which urges on the painter or the author ! We, who are neither, ought to marvel less at the works produced than at the efforts made."

"The government of the mind is absolute, but nothing in its whole dominion does it modify as it does the face."

"[From Lady Mandeville]: This is truly a man's logic, 'making the worse appear the better reason.'"

"[From Mr Morland]: You all universally like the qualities in which you yourselves are deficient : the more you indulge in that not exactly deceit, which, in its best sense, belongs to your sex, the more you appreciate and distinguish that which is true in the character of man."