Vice is a monster of so frightful mien As to be hated needs but to be seen; Yet seen too oft, familiar with her face, We first endure, then pity, then embrace.

Words are like Leaves; and where they most abound, Much Fruit of Sense beneath is rarely found.

Some people will never learn anything, for this reason, because they understand everything too soon.

True ease in writing comes from art, not chance, As those move easiest who have learn'd to dance.

Do good by stealth, and blush to find it fame.

Our judgments, like our watches, none go just alike, yet each believes his own

Blessed is he who expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed.

To err is human, to forgive, divine.

Fools rush in where angels fear to tread.

Charms strike the sight, but merit wins the soul.

How happy is the blameless vestal’s lot! The world forgetting, by the world forgot. Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind! Each pray’r accepted, and each wish resign’d

A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. So is a lot.

A man should never be ashamed to own that he has been in the wrong, which is but saying in other words that he is wiser today than he was yesterday.

What Reason weaves, by Passion is undone.

A little learning is a dangerous thing. Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian Spring; There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain, and drinking largely sobers us again.

Act well your part; there all the honour lies.

Always wanting another man than your own.

If Galileo had said in verse that the world moved, the inquisition might have let him alone.

Love is an utterly bygone, sorry, worn-out, miserable thing with me- for him or anyone else.

She was but a transient impression, half forgotten.

You are absolutely the most ethereal, least sensual woman I ever knew to exist without inhuman sexlessness.

Thoroughly convinced of the impossibility of his own suit, a high resolve constrained him not to injure that of another. This is a lover's most stoical virtue, as the lack of it is a lover's most venial sin.

They were as sublime as the moon and stars above them, and the moon ans stars were as ardent as they.

You simply mean that you flirted outrageously with him, poor old chap, and then repented, and to make reparation, married him, though you tortured yourself to death by doing it.

I hate to be what is called a clever girl--there are too many of that sort now!

O, how I wish I had never seen him! Loving is misery for women always.

The smile on your mouth was the deadest thing alive enough to have strength to die. (from "Neutral Tones")

It was the touch of the imperfect upon the would-be perfect that gave the sweetness, because it was that which gave the humanity

It was terribly beautiful to Tess today, for since her eyes last fell upon it she had learnt that the serpent hisses where the sweet birds sing.

Many of her thoughts were perfect syllogisms; unluckily they always remained thoughts. Only a few were irrational assumptions; but, unfortunately, they were the ones which most frequently grew into deeds

You could sometimes see her twelfth year in her cheeks, or her ninth sparkling from her eyes; and even her fifth would flit over the curves of her mouth now and then.

A novel is an impression, not an argument.

Done because we are too many.

It was then that the ecstasy and the dream began, in which emotion was the matter of the universe, and matter but an adventitious intrusion likely to hinder you from spinning where you wanted to spin.

I forgot the defective can be more than the whole

Men thin away to insignificance and oblivion quite as often by not making the most of good spirits when they have them as by lacking good spirits when they are indispensable.

Good, better, best Never let it rest, Till ur good is better And better is best.

When women are secret they are secret indeed; and more often then not they only begin to be secret with the advent of a second lover.

I have felt lately, more and more, that my present way of living is bad in every respect.

I am not a fool, you know, although I am a woman, and have my woman’s moments.

Some folks want their luck buttered.

Bless thy simplicity, Tess

When a strong woman recklessly throws away her strength she is worse than a weak woman who has never had any strength to throw away.

We ought to have lived in mental communion, and no more.

Everybody must be managed. Queens must be managed. Kings must be managed, for men want managing almost as much as women, and that's saying a good deal.

Love, though added emotion, is substracted capacity

I want to question my belief, so that what is left after I have questioned it, will be even stronger.

And yet to every bad, there is a worse

Indifference to fate which, though it often makes a villain of a man, is the basis of his sublimity when it does not.

But some women only require an emergency to make them fit for one.