Destiny stands by sarcastic with our dramatis personae folded in her hand.
Among all forms of mistake, prophecy is the most gratuitous.
A prig is a fellow who is always making you a present of his opinions.
We long for an affection altogether ignorant of our faults. Heaven has accorded this to us in the uncritical canine attachment.
It's but little good you'll go a-water-ing the last year's crop.
'Tis God gives skill but not without men's hands: he could not make Antonio Stradivarius violins without Antonio.
Fate has carried me'Mid the thick arrows: I will keep my stand--Not shrink and let the shaft pass by my breastTo pierce another.
Truth has rough flavours if we bite it through.
The important work of moving the world forward does not wait to be done by perfect men.
But human experience is usually paradoxical, that means incongruous with the phrases of current talk or even current philosophy.
You should read history and look at ostracism, persecution, martyrdom, and that kind of thing. They always happen to the best men, you know.
People were so ridiculous with their illusions, carrying their fool's caps unawares, thinking their own lies opaque while everybody else's were transparent, making themselves exceptions to everything,...
When he turned his head quickly his hair seemed to shake out light, and some persons thought they saw decided genius in this coruscation. Mr. Casaubon, on the contrary, stood rayless.
When a tender affection has been storing itself in us through many of our years, the idea that we could accept any exchange for it seems to be a cheapening of our lives. And we can set a watch over ou...
There's folks as make bad butter and trusten to the salt t' hide it.
The story can be told without many words.
The great safeguard of society and of domestic life was, that opinions were not acted on. Sane people did what their neighbors did, so that if any lunatics were at large, one might know and avoid them...
The fact is unalterable, that a fellow-mortal with whose nature you are acquainted solely through the brief entrances and exits of a few imaginative weeks called courtship, may, when seen in the conti...
She was no longer struggling against the perception of facts, but adjusting herself to their clearest perception.
I suppose it's the name: there's a deal in the name of a tune.