The true picture of life as it is, if it could be adequately painted, would show men what they are, and how they might rise, not, indeed to perfection, but one step first, and then another on the ladder.

I hold that gentleman to be the best-dressed whose dress no one observes.

Passionate love, I take it, rarely lasts long, and is very troublesome while it does last. Mutual esteem is very much more valuable.

As to happiness in this life it is hardly compatible with that diminished respect which ever attends the relinquishing of labour.

But then in novels the most indifferent hero comes out right at last. Some god comes out of a theatrical cloud and leaves the poor devil ten thousand-a-year and a title.

Marvelous is the power which can be exercised, almost unconsciously, over a company, or an individual, or even upon a crowd by one person gifted with good temper, good digestion, good intellects, and good looks.

I doubt whether any girl would be satisfied with her lover's mind if she knew the whole of it.

And though it is much to be a nobleman, it is more to be a gentleman.

I have no ambition to surprise my reader. Castles with unknown passages are not compatible with my homely muse.

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.

There is no way of writing well and also of writing easily.

Dance with a girl three times, and if you like the light of her eye and the tone of voice with which she, breathless, answers your little questions about horseflesh and music about affairs masculine and feminine, then take the leap in the dark.

High rank and soft manners may not always belong to a true heart.

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.

Neither money nor position can atone to me for low birth.

Life is so unlike theory.

When it comes to money nobody should give up anything.

There is no happiness in love, except at the end of an English novel.

Success is the necessary misfortune of life, but it is only to the very unfortunate that it comes early.

Wine is valued by its price, not its flavour.

They who do not understand that a man may be brought to hope that which of all things is the most grievous to him, have not observed with sufficient closeness the perversity of the human mind.

My sweetheart is to me more than a coined hemisphere.

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.

What is there that money will not do?

A fellow oughtn't to let his family property go to pieces.

Never think that you're not good enough. A man should never think that. People will take you very much at your own reckoning.

It has now become the doctrine of a large clan of politicians that political honesty is unnecessary, slow, subversive of a man's interests, and incompatible with quick onward movement.

It has become a certainty now that if you will only advertise sufficiently you may make a fortune by selling anything.

I ain't a bit ashamed of anything.

There is no royal road to learning; no short cut to the acquirement of any art.

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.

I think the greatest rogues are they who talk most of their honesty.

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.

Since woman's rights have come up a young woman is better able to fight her own battle.

I do not know whether there be, as a rule, more vocal expression of the sentiment of love between a man and a woman, than there is between two thrushes. They whistle and call to each other, guided by instinct rather than by reason.

There is no road to wealth so easy and respectable as that of matrimony.

It is hard to rescue a man from the slough of luxury and idleness combined. If anything can do it, it is a cradle filled annually.

Book love... is your pass to the greatest, the purest, and the most perfect pleasure that God has prepared for His creatures.

It is the test of a novel writer's art that he conceal his snake-in-the-grass; but the reader may be sure that it is always there.

A man's love, till it has been chastened and fastened by the feeling of duty which marriage brings with it, is instigated mainly by the difficulty of pursuit.

I never knew a government yet that wanted to do anything.

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.

It may almost be a question whether such wisdom as many of us have in our mature years has not come from the dying out of the power of temptation, rather than as the results of thought and resolution.

When a man is ill nothing is so important to him as his own illness.

It is self-evident that at sixty-five a man has done all that he is fit to do.

Don't let love interfere with your appetite. It never does with mine.

There is no human bliss equal to twelve hours of work with only six hours in which to do it.

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.

No man thinks there is much ado about nothing when the ado is about himself.