Love is like any other luxury. You have no right to it unless you can afford it.
It is a comfortable feeling to know that you stand on your own ground. Land is about the only thing that can't fly away.
There is no royal road to learning; no short cut to the acquirement of any art.
Never think that you're not good enough. A man should never think that. People will take you very much at your own reckoning.
My sweetheart is to me more than a coined hemisphere.
The habit of reading is the only enjoyment in which there is no alloy; it lasts when all other pleasures fade.
Book love... is your pass to the greatest, the purest, and the most perfect pleasure that God has prepared for His creatures.
Success is the necessary misfortune of life, but it is only to the very unfortunate that it comes early.
This at least should be a rule through the letter-writing world: that no angry letter be posted till four-and-twenty hours will have elapsed since it was written.
And though it is much to be a nobleman, it is more to be a gentleman.
It is a grand thing to rise in the world. The ambition to do so is the very salt of the earth. It is the parent of all enterprise, and the cause of all improvement.
As to that leisure evening of life, I must say that I do not want it. I can conceive of no contentment of which toil is not to be the immediate parent.
When the ivy has found its tower, when the delicate creeper has found its strong wall, we know how the parasite plants grow and prosper.
A woman's life is not perfect or whole till she has added herself to a husband. Nor is a man's life perfect or whole till he has added to himself a wife.
There are some achievements which are never done in the presence of those who hear of them. Catching salmon is one, and working all night is another.
Neither money nor position can atone to me for low birth.
It is necessary to get a lot of men together, for the show of the thing, otherwise the world will not believe. That is the meaning of committees. But the real work must always be done by one or two men.
I do like a little romance... just a sniff, as I call it, of the rocks and valleys. Of course, bread-and-cheese is the real thing. The rocks and valleys are no good at all, if you haven't got that.
When a man is ill nothing is so important to him as his own illness.
I never knew a government yet that wanted to do anything.
