"The future has a more subtle sympathy with the present than our imperfect nature can analyse. Who has not felt that nameless shadow upon the spirit, which indicates the coming trouble as surely as the over-hanging cloud foretells the thunderstorm ? The external world is full of signs ; and so is the internal, if we knew but how to trace them. There is the weight on the air before the tempest; there is the weight on the heart as the coming evil approaches."

"Life has dark secrets ; and the hearts are few That treasure not some sorrow from the world— A sorrow silent, gloomy, and unknown, Yet colouring the future from the past. … for time is terrible, Avenging, and betraying."

"I believe all the good that is sometimes said of human nature when I remember the feelings of youth; and it is this principle explains why men whose "hearts are dry as summer's dust," often delight in the society of the very young. The sympathy is awakened by memory."

"[From Lord Norbourne]: The next thing that a young man loses, after his heart, is his hearing."

"[From Lord Norbourne]: If a young man has his way to make in the world, a wife is a dead weight upon his hands. Indeed, I have looked upon the fable of Sisyphus as an allegory, and that his wife was the stone which so perpetually rolled back upon his hands, effectually retarding his weary progress up-hill."

"There is nothing to which you so soon become accustomed as to the presence of the beloved one ; the gentle chain of habit easily becomes a sweet necessity."

"What mockeries are our most firm resolves ! To will is ours, but not to execute. We map our future like some unknown coast, And say, " Here is an harbour, here a rock — The one we will attain, the other shun :" And we do neither."

"Nothing can compensate to a woman for the want of exterior attraction. There is a nameless fascination about beauty, which seems, like all fairy gifts, crowded into one. It wins without an effort, and obtains credit for possessing every thing else. How many mortifications, from its very cradle, has the unpleasing exterior to endure !"

"Even into philosophy is carried the deeper truth of the heart—and how many inconsistencies are at once understood ! We grow more indulgent, more pitying ; and one sweet weakness of our own leads to so much indulgence for others. We doubt, however, whether the term weakness be not misapplied in this case. If there be one emotion that redeems our humanity by stirring all that is generous and unselfish within us, that awakens all the poetry of our nature, and that makes us believe in that heaven of which it bears the likeness, it is love : love, spiritual, devoted, and eternal ; love, that softens the shadow of the valley of death, to welcome us after to its own and immortal home."

"Love is a new intelligence entered into the being ; it is the softest, but the most subtle light ; in all experience it deceives itself; but how many truths does it teach,—how much knowledge does it impart ! It makes us alive to a thousand feelings, of whose very existence, till then, we had not dreamed. The poet's page has a new magic : we comprehend all that had before seemed graceful exaggeration ; we now find that poetry falls short of what it seeks to express ; and we take a new delight in the musical language that seems made for tenderness."

"I do not ask to offer thee A timid love like mine ; I lay it, as the rose is laid, On some immortal shrine."

"To me there is no season so lovely as the autumn. There is a gayety about the spring with which I have no anything for its perpetual revival of leaf and bloom is too great a contrast to the inner world, where so many feelings lie barren, and so many hopes withered. There is an activity about it, from which the wearied spirits shrink; and a joyousness, which but makes you turn more sadly upon yourself; but about autumn there is a tender melancholy inexpressibly soothing ; decay is around, but such is in your own heart. There is a languor in the air which encourages your own, and the poetry of memory is in every drooping flower and falling leaf. The very magnificence of its Assyrian array is touched with the light of imagination : even while you watch it, it passes away as your brightest hopes have done before."

"Moreover, the habits of business are the most enduring of any; …"

"… there are no weaknesses which we so thoroughly despise as those to which ourselves have yielded; and no faults strike us so forcibly as our own, when they are past."

"No two people are more different in outward seeming, than a man sometimes grows to differ from himself."

"[From Lord Norbourne]: Wit only gains you the reputation of being hardhearted, which it is very well to be in reality, but not to have the reputation of being. It shocks people's little innocent prejudices, and these I always respect when I can. Indeed, the only character I ever found of any use to man, was that of having no character at all."

"[From Lord Norbourne]: As little do I think that your country pursuits deserve to engross your time. Life was given for something better than sitting after fish, walking after birds, and riding after hares.”"

"[From Lord Norbourne]: Talents of this high and imaginative order, seem to me rather given to benefit others than their possessor. Their harvest is in the future, not the present. Their brains produce the golden ore, which commoner hands mould to the daily purposes of life.""

"But dreams, which fill the waking eye With deeper spells than sleep, When hours unnumbered pass us by ; From such we wake and weep. We wake, but not to sleep again, The heart has lost its youth ; The morning light that wakes us then, Cold, calm, and stern, is truth."

"[From Lord Norbourne]: Youth is prone to admire ; but it is odd how, in a few years, we discover the defects of our demigods."

"[From Lord Norbourne]: Statesmen and philosophers too, often talk a great deal of nonsense. Half of what are called our finest sentiments originate in the necessity of rounding a sentence."

"Green trees and blue skies are very well in their way ; I believe indispensable to painters, and useful to poets :"

"... I have a respect for family pride. If it be a prejudice, it is prejudice in its most picturesque shape ; but I hold that it is connected with some of the noblest feelings in our nature."

"A great sorrow forgets every thing but itself; but little sorrows exaggerate themselves and each other."

"Hard are life's early steps; and but that youth Is buoyant, confident, and strong in hope, Men would behold its threshold, and despair."

"[PS to a Lady Marchmont letter]: Lord Marchmont, whenever he sees me writing, sends you a message of equal length and civility. Once named, it will do for always. You can keep it by you like a stock of frozen provision."

"[From Lady Mary Wortley Montague within Lady Marchmont’s letters]: All men are rascals to women, and all women rascals to each other."

"[From Lady Mary Wortley Montague within Lady Marchmont’s letters]: Friendship is just an innocent delusion, to round a period in a moral essay."

"The first step towards establishing pretensions of any kind, is to believe firmly in them yourself: faith is very catching, and half the beauty-reputations of which I hear have originated with the possessors."

"It (London) is the most real place in the world ; you will inevitably be brought to your level."

"Which was the true philosopher ?—the sage Who to the sorrows and the crimes of life Gave tears—or he who laughed at all he saw ?"

"[From Lady Marchmont’s Letters to Sir Jasper]: Chloe believed that he had immortalised himself by a representation of the war of the Titans against the gods. Unfortunately, they were higher than even the room ; and Lord Marchmont refused to comply with the wishes of the artiste, and to take down his splendidly painted ceiling to admit of the dessert."

"[From Lady Marchmont’s Letters to Sir Jasper]: What a duty to one's self it is to be young, vain, and pretty ! but the middle quality is the most important. Vanity is a cloak that wraps us up comfortably, and a drapery which sets us off to the best advantage ; and its great merit is, that it suits itself to every sort of circumstance."

"Vanity ! guiding power, 'tis thine to rule Statesman and vestryman—the knave or fool. The Macedonian crossed Hydaspes' wave, Fierce as the storm, and gloomy as the grave. Urged by the thought, what would Athenians say, When next they gathered on a market-day ? And the same spirit that induced his toil, Leads on the cook, to stew, and roast, and boil : Whether the spice be mixed—the flag unfurled— Each deems their task the glory of the world."

"There is to age something so enlivening in the company of youth, unconsciously it shares the cheerfulness it witnesses, and hopes with the hopes around, in that sympathy which is the kindliest part of our nature."

"Fear dwells around the absent—and our love For such grows all too anxious, too much filled With vain regrets, and fond inquietudes : We know not love till those we love depart."

"[Of poets]: They gather from sorrow its sweetest emotions ; they repeat of hope but its noblest visions; they look on nature with an earnest love, which wins the power of making her hidden beauty visible; and they reproduce the passionate, the true, and the beautiful. Alas ! they themselves are not what they paint; the low want subdues the lofty will ; the small and present vanity interferes with the far and glorious aim : but still it is something to have looked beyond the common sphere where they were fated to struggle. They paid in themselves the bitter penalty of not realising their own ideal ; but mankind have to be thankful for the generous legacy of thought and harmony bequeathed by those who were among earth's proscribed and miserable. Fame is bought by happiness."

"[From Walter Maynard]: Poetry is the immortality of earth : where shall we look for our noblest thoughts, and our tenderest feelings, but in its eternal pages ?"

"Is not the lark companion of the spring? And should not Hope — that sky-lark of the heart— Bear, with her sunny song, youth company ?"

"But there is something in parting that softens the heart;—it is as if we had never felt how unutterably dear a beloved object could be, till we are about to lose it for ever."

"[From Henrietta]: A man in love is a nonentity for the time—he is nothing ; and nature, that is, my nature, abhors a vacuum."

"O ! never another dream can be Like that early dream of ours, When the fairy, Hope, lay down like a child, And slept amid opening flowers."

"He was of those whose sensitive organisation, and inborn talent, constitute that genius which holds ordinary maxims at defiance. No education can confer—no circumstances check it; and even to account for it, we need, with the ancients, to believe in inspiration."

"Farewell's a bitter word to say."

"We do not know how much we love, Until we come to leave ; An aged tree, a common flower, Are things o'er which we grieve."

"There was an evil in Pandora's box Beyond all other ones, yet it came forth In guise so lovely, that men crowded round And sought it as the dearest of all treasure. ... The evil's name was Love."

"[From Sir Jasper]: I like a cat because it does not disguise its selfishness with any flattering hypocrisies. Its attachment is not to yourself, but to your house. Let it but have food, and a warm lair among the embers, and it heeds not at whose expense. Then it has the spirit to resent aggression. You shall beat your dog, and he will fawn upon you; but a cat never forgives : it has no tender mercies, and it torments before it destroys its prey."

"Who shall place a bound to human folly, when both the inflicter and the endurer of torture have deemed that pain is acceptable in the sight of God ?"

"Who, in after life, can help smiling at the fancies in which early anticipation revelled ; how absurd, how impossible, do they not now appear! Yet, in such mockery lurks much of bitterness : the laugh rings hollow from many a disappointment, and many a mortification."

"There are in existence two periods when we shrink from any great vicissitude—early youth and old age. In the middle of life, we are indifferent to change ; for we have discovered that nothing is, in the end, so good or so bad as it at first appeared. We know, moreover, how to accommodate ourselves to circumstances ; and enough of exertion is still left in us to cope with the event. But age is heart-wearied and tempest-torn : it is the crumbling cenotaph of fear and hope ! Wherefore should there be turmoil for the few, and evening hours, when all they covet is repose ? They see their shadow fall upon the grave ; and need but to be at rest beneath! Youth is not less averse from change ; but that is from exaggeration of its consequences, for all seems to the young so important, and so fatal. They are timid, because they know not what they fear; hopeful, because they know not what they expect. Despite their gayety of confidence, they yet dread the first plunge into life's unfathomed deep."