To beat a retreat with the honors of war has always been the triumph of the ablest generals.
Though the great things of life are simple to understand and easy to express, the littlenesses require a vast number of details to explain them.
Though all things in society as well as in the universe are said to have a purpose, there do exist here below certain beings whose purpose and utility seem inexplicable.
The habits of life form the soul, and the soul forms the physical presence.
The bad points of others show out so strongly against the good that they usually strike our eyes before they wound us.
Persons without minds are like weeds that delight in good earth; they want to be amused by others, all the more because they are dull within.
Old maids who have never yielded in their habits of life or in their characters to other lives and other characters, as the fate of woman exacts, have, as a general thing, a mania for making others give way to them.
Now it is impossible for a woman who is perpetually at war with herself and living in contradiction to her true life, to leave others in peace or refrain from envying their happiness.
Moral philosophy and political economy both condemn the individual who consumes without producing; who fills a place on the earth but does not shed upon it either good or evil,—for evil is sometimes good the meaning of which is not at once made manifest.
It is so natural, socially speaking, to laugh at the failings of others that we ought to forgive the ridicule our own absurdities excite, and be annoyed only by calumny.
God makes no mistake in His judgments, Madame; I recognize no tribunal but His.
Feeble folk are as easily reassured as they are frightened.