I rely on the promise, God is kind to women, fools, and drunk people.

The surest way to get a thing in this life is to be prepared for doing without it, to the exclusion even of hope.

Men may be rivals, opponents in their fortunes, and yet be friends in their hearts and fair towards each other‘s worth; but woman, the instant she is rivaled, becomes unjust.

People who are so dreadfully “devoted” to their wives are so apt, from mere habit, to get devoted to other people’s wives as well.

But what are friends? What is a husband, even, compared with one’s Mother? Of her love, one is always so sure! It is the only love that nothing – not even misconduct on our part – can take away from us.

I do think there is much truth in the Young German idea that marriage is a shockingly immoral institution, as well as what we have long known it for – an extremely disagreeable one.

I am not at all the sort of person you and I took me for.

The glittering baits of titles and honours are only for children and fools.

There is never much to be feared for anyone that is born with sense and truth in him, whatever else he may have or want.

Not a hundredth part of the thoughts in my head have ever been or ever will be spoken or written — as long as I keep my senses, at least.

The only thing that makes one place more attractive to me than another is the quantity of heart I find in it.

Young children are such nasty little beasts!

Who knows but I shall grow reasonable at last, descend from my ideal heaven to the real earth, marry, and – Oh Plato! – make a pudding?

There is nothing like a good bit of pain for taking the conceit out of one.

I have lived so long among people who do not understand me, been so long accustomed to refrain and disguise myself for fear of being laughed at, that I have grown as difficult to come at as a snail in a shell; and what is worse, I cannot come out of my shell when I wish it.

How many precious things do we not already possess which others have not – have hardly an idea of! Let us enjoy these, then, and bless God that we are permitted to enjoy them, rather than importune His goodness with vain longings for more.

I rely on the promise, ‘God is kind to women, fools, and drunk people.’

cracked things often hold out as long as whole things; one takes so much better care of them!

The habits of study in which I have been brought up have done much to support me. I never allow myself to be one moment unoccupied.

Homeopathy – an invention of the Father of Lies! I have tried it and found it wanting. I would swallow their whole doles medicine chest for sixpence, and be sure of finding myself neither better nor worse for it.

One of the main uses of a home is to stay in it, when one is too weak and spiritless for conforming, without effort, to the ways of other houses.

It is sad and wrong to be so dependent for the life of my life on any human being as I am on you; but I cannot by any force of logic cure myself at this date, when it has become second nature.

They call me ‘sweet,’ and ‘gentle‘; and some of the men go the length of calling me ‘endearing,’ and I laugh in my sleeve and think, ‘Oh, Lord! If you but knew what a brimstone of a creature I am behind all this beautiful amiability!’

A fashionable wife! Oh! Never will I be anything so heartless! I have pictured for myself a far higher destiny than this. – Will it ever be more than a picture?

I declare I would rather be a kitten and cry, ‘Mew!’ than live as I see many of my female acquaintances do, tearing each other’s characters to pieces, and wearing out their lives in vanity and vexation of spirit.

On earth the living have much to bear; the difference is chiefly in the manner of bearing, and my manner of bearing is far from being the best.

Never does one feel oneself so utterly helpless as in trying to speak comfort for great bereavement.

Use the noble gifts which God has given you!

I wonder that among all the evils deprecated in the Liturgy, no one thought of inserting flitting. Is there any worse thing? Oh no, no!

Teaching, I find, is not the most amusing thing on earth; in fact, with a stupid lump for a Pupil, it is about the most irksome.

Never does one feel oneself so utterly helpless as in trying to speak comfort for great bereavement. I will not try it. Time is the only comforter for the loss of a mother.

A positive engagement to marry a certain person at a certain time, at all haps and hazards, I have always considered the most ridiculous thing on earth.

Indeed, I should be very stupid or very thankless if I did not congratulate myself every hour of the day on the lot which it has pleased Providence to assign me. My Husband is so kind! So, in all respects, after my own heart!

When one has been threatened with a great injustice, one accepts a smaller as a favour.