Emotions and Feelings

It was prettily devised of Aesop, ‘The fly sat upon the axle-tree of the chariot-wheel and said, what a dust do I raise.’

A man that studieth revenge keeps his own wounds green.

Revenge is a kind of wild justice.

It redoubleth joys, and cutteth griefs in halves.

A crowd is not company, and faces are but a gallery of pictures, and talk but a tinkling cymbal, where there is no love.

Men fear death as children fear to go in the dark; and as that natural fear in children is increased with tales, so is the other.

Prosperity doth best discover vice, but adversity doth best discover virtue.

For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbours, and laugh at them in our turn?

It is not time or opportunity that is to determine intimacy; it is disposition alone. Seven years would be insufficient to make some people acquainted with each other, and seven days are more than enough for others.

May I ask whether these pleasing attentions proceed from the impulse of the moment, or are the result of previous study?

‘My idea of good company, Mr Elliot, is the company of clever, well-informed people, who have a great deal of conversation; that is what I call good company.’ ‘You are mistaken,’ said he gently, ‘that is not good company, that is the best.’

Where people wish to attach, they should always be ignorant. To come with a well-informed mind, is to come with an inability of administering to the vanity of others, which a sensible person would always wish to avoid. A woman especially, if she have the misfortune of knowing any thing, should conceal it as well as she can.

‘Oh! it is only a novel! … only Cecilia, or Camilla, or Belinda:’ or, in short, only some work in which the most thorough knowledge of human nature, the happiest delineation of its varieties, the liveliest effusions of wit and humour are conveyed to the world in the best chosen language.

Oh! who can ever be tired of Bath?

Let other pens dwell on guilt and misery. I quit such odious subjects as soon as I can.

A large income is the best recipe for happiness I ever heard of. It certainly may secure all the myrtle and turkey part of it.

The sooner every party breaks up the better.

Nothing happens to anybody which he is not fitted by nature to bear.

Too late came I to love thee, O thou Beauty both so ancient and so fresh, yea too late came I to love thee. And behold, thou wert within me, and I out of myself, where I made search for thee.

Tolle lege, tolle lege.

Give me chastity and continency—but not yet!

You have made us for yourself, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.

When I find myself in the company of scientists, I feel like a shabby curate who has strayed by mistake into a drawing room full of dukes.

A poet’s hope: to be,