We look to the higher classes and to the lower for good breeding.  Middle class people are proverbially ill-bred.  What can equal the airs and assumptions of the retired grocer’s wife, who has neither the breeding of a lady, nor the unaffected manner of the working-woman.

* * * * *

What a pity there is such an incessant babbling of human tongues, when the daisies by the wayside, the trees of the forest, the birds in their nests, could tell us such wondrous things if our ears were attuned to hear, but the senses are deadened by the discordant din of dismal sounds.

Love is the one power which transfigures the common things of life.

* * * * *

One-half of our lives is spent in making blunders, the other half in trying to rectify them.

* * * * *

How useless to tell many people to think, for they have nothing to think.  A man reasons, a woman divines.

* * * * *

There are so many inconsistencies in life that at times one is appalled.  Take marriage, for instance:—­A young woman marries a man who is tottering on the brink of the grave; old, blaze, a worn-out roue; but with money enough to gild and gloss the antiquated ruin.  She goes before a clergyman and promises to love, honour and obey.  Yes; she loves the luxury with which she will be surrounded, the glitter of diamonds, the equipages, the great house, all the paraphanalia of wealth, but she hates the trembling, tottering, blear-eyed object who bought her.

The clergyman gives his blessing, society receives them with open arms, and legalized prostitution is upheld by the majesty of the law and encircled by the sanctified robes of the Church.

The ruling passion of the age:  worship of self and worship of pelf.

* * * * *

The age of good breeding has passed; insolence has taken its place.

* * * * *

A woman ceases to think of self when she looks in the face of her new-born child.

* * * * *

There are people who go through life as if they were going to their own funeral—­and did not enjoy it.

* * * * *

I would rather have for a friend the most thorough-paced scamp, with a generous heart, than the most respectable, canting, whining, Pharisee.

* * * * *

To stand in a rarefied atmosphere on a mountain height and view the struggles of ordinary mortals below may be poetic, but it is very lonely.

* * * * *

A woman may defy the world for a man she loves, and imagine that he will love her for the sacrifice, but no greater mistake can be made.  Men are not so constituted.  When he sees her standing alone, dishonored, a mark for the finger of scorn, her charm for him is forever lost.