"When I say I know women, I mean I know that I don't know them. Every single woman I ever knew is a puzzle to me, as I have no doubt she is to herself."

"Stupid people, people who do not know how to laugh, are always pompous and self-conceited."

"Time passes—Time the consoler—Time the anodyne—Time the grey calm satirist, whose sad smile seems to say, Look, O man, at the vanity of the objects you pursue, and of yourself who pursue them!"

"Society having ordained certain customs, men are bound to obey the law of society, and conform to its harmless orders."

"He who meanly admires mean things is a Snob."

"It is impossible, in our condition of society, not to be sometimes a Snob."

"If you will fling yourself under the wheels, will go over you, depend upon it."

"That which we call a Snob, by any other name would still be Snobbish."

"Out of the fictitious book I get the expression of the life of the time; of the manners, the movement, the dress, the pleasures, the laughter, the ridicules of society—the old times live again, and I travel in the old country of England. Can the heaviest historian do more for me?"

"Try to frequent the company of your betters. In books and life that is the most wholesome society; learn to admire rightly; the great pleasure of life is that. Note what the great men admired; they admired great things: narrow spirits admire basely, and worship meanly."

"I suppose as long as novels last and authors aim at interesting their public, there must always be in the story a virtuous and gallant hero, a wicked monster his opposite, and a pretty girl who finds a champion; bravery and virtue conquer beauty: and vice, after seeming to triumph through a certain number of pages, is sure to be discomfited in the last volume, when justice overtakes him and honest folks come by their own."

"One tires of a page of which every sentence sparkles with points, of a sentimentalist who is always pumping the tears from his eyes or your own. One suspects the genuineness of the tear, the naturalness of the humour."

"There is no man that teaches us to be gentlemen better than Joseph Addison."

"Humour is the mistress of tears; she knows the way to the fons lachrymarum, strikes in dry and rugged places with her enchanting wand, and bids the fountain gush and sparkle. She has refreshed myriads more from her natural springs, than ever tragedy has watered from her pompous old urn."

"Thus love makes fools of all of us, big and little"

"It is best to love wisely, no doubt; but to love foolishly is better than not to be able to love at all. Some of us can't: and are proud of our impotence, too."

"Yes, I am a fatal man, Madame Fribsbi. To inspire hopeless passion is my destiny."

"Remember, it's as easy to marry a rich woman as a poor woman."

"Of the Corporation of the Goosequill — of the Press, my boy, … of the fourth estate … There she is — the great engine — she never sleeps. She has her ambassadors in every quarter of the world — her couriers upon every road. Her officers march along with armies, and her envoys walk into statesmen's cabinets. They are ubiquitous."

"Although I enter not, Yet round about the spot Ofttimes I hover, And near the sacred gate, With longing eyes I wait, Expectant of her."

"As the gambler said of his dice, to love and win is the best thing, to love and lose is the next best."

"If a secret history of books could be written, and the author's private thoughts and meanings noted down alongside of his story, how many insipid volumes would become interesting, and dull tales excite the reader!"

"How hard it is to make an Englishman acknowledge that he is happy!"

"We see flowers of good blooming in foul places."

"'Tis not the dying for a faith that's so hard, Master Harry — every man of every nation has done that — 'tis the living up to it that is difficult, as I know to my cost."

"'Tis strange what a man may do, and a woman yet think him an angel."

"There are a thousand thoughts lying within a man that he does not know till he takes up the pen to write."

"If there is a verity in wine, according to the old adage, what an amiable-natured character Dick's must have been! In proportion as he took in wine he overflowed with kindness."

"I think Steele shone rather than sparkled."

"Dick never thought that his bottle companion was a butt to aim at—only a friend to shake by the hand."

"We love being in love, that's the truth on't."

"Sure, love vincit omnia; is immeasurably above all ambition, more precious than wealth, more noble than name. He knows not life who knows not that: he hath not felt the highest faculty of the soul who hath not enjoyed it."

"What stories are new? All types of all characters march through all fables."

"The true pleasure of life is to live with your inferiors."

"What money is better bestowed than that of a schoolboy's tip? How the kindness is recalled by the recipient in after days! It blesses him that gives and him that takes."

"The wicked are wicked, no doubt, and they go astray and they fall, and they come by their deserts: but who can tell the mischief which the very virtuous do?"

"To be beautiful is enough. If a woman can do that well, who shall demand more from her? You don't want a rose to sing."

"Young ladies may have been crossed in love, and have had their sufferings, their frantic moments of grief and tears, their wakeful nights, and so forth; but it is only in very sentimental novels that people occupy themselves perpetually with that passion; and, I believe, what are called broken hearts are very rare articles indeed."

"If love lives through all life; and survives through all sorrow; and remains steadfast with us through all changes; and in all darkness of spirit burns brightly; and if we die deplores us forever and loves still equally; and exists with the very last gasp and throb of the faithful bosom—whence it passes with the pure soul beyond death; surely it shall be immortal!"

"Bad husbands will make bad wives."

"People hate, as they love, unreasonably."

"This a noble dish is— A sort of soup or broth, or brew, Or hotchpotch of all sorts of fishes, That Greenwich never could outdo."

"Christmas is here: Winds whistle shrill, Icy and chill, Little care we: Little we fear Weather without, Sheltered about The Mahogany Tree."

"Ho, pretty page, with the dimpled chin, That never has known the barber’s shear, All your wish is woman to win, This is the way that boys begin,— Wait till you come to Forty Year."

"Werther had a love for Charlotte Such as words could never utter; Would you know how first he met her? She was cutting bread and butter."

"Charlotte, having seen his body Borne before her on a shutter, Like a well-conducted person, Went on cutting bread and butter."

"Then sing as Martin Luther sang, As Doctor Martin Luther sang: “Who loves not wine, woman and song, He is a fool his whole life long!”"

"The play is done; the curtain drops, Slow falling to the prompter’s bell: A moment yet the actor stops, And looks around, to say farewell. It is an irksome word and task; And, when he’s laughed and said his say, He shows, as he removes the mask, A face that’s anything but gay."

"The book of female logic is blotted all over with tears, and Justice in their courts is for ever in a passion."