Echoes

Marriage has many pains, but celibacy has no pleasures.

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.

It is not a lack of love, but a lack of friendship that makes unhappy marriages.

Marriage must constantly vanquish a monster that devours everything: the monster of habit.

Nothing, I am sure, calls forth the faculties so much as the being obliged to struggle with the world; and this is not a woman's province in a married state. Her sphere of action is not large, and if she is not taught to look into her own heart, how trivial are her occupations and pursuits! What little arts engross and narrow her mind!

An object in possession seldom retains the same charm that it had in pursuit.

The course of true love never did run smooth.

How many women thus waste life away the prey of discontent, who might have practised as physicians, regulated a farm, managed a shop, and stood erect, supported by their own industry, instead of hanging their heads surcharged with the dew of sensibility, that consumes the beauty to which it at first gave lustre.

True love is like ghosts, which everyone talks about but few have seen.

He that hath wife and children hath given hostages to fortune; for they are impediments to great enterprises, either of virtue or mischief.

Boredom is the root of all evil — the despairing refusal to be oneself.

A lady's imagination is very rapid; it jumps from admiration to love, from love to matrimony, in a moment.

It is vain to expect virtue from women till they are in some degree independent of men; nay, it is vain to expect that strength of natural affection which would make them good wives and mothers. Whilst they are absolutely dependent on their husbands they will be cunning, mean, and selfish.

There is not love of life without despair about life.

Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated.

The first bond of society is the marriage tie; the next, our children; then the whole family of our house.

Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don’t lose faith. I’m convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You’ve got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking. Don’t settle.

She's beautiful, and therefore to be woo'd;She is a woman, therefore to be won.

Do you want to spend the rest of your life selling sugared water or do you want a chance to change the world?

Should it be proved that woman is naturally weaker than man, from whence does it follow that it is natural for her to labour to become still weaker than nature intended her to be? Arguments of this cast are an insult to common sense, and savour of passion. The divine right of husbands, like the divine right of kings, may, it is to be hoped, in this enlightened age, be contested without danger, and though conviction may not silence many boisterous disputants, yet, when any prevailing prejudice is attacked, the wise will consider, and leave the narrow-minded to rail with thoughtless vehemence at innovation.

You shall have joy, or you shall have power, said God; you shall not have both.

Do not seek pleasure for its own sake.

Tyrants and sensualists are in the right when they endeavour to keep women in the dark, because the former want only slaves, and the latter a play-thing.

But let there be spaces in your togetherness, and let the winds of the heavens dance between you. Love one another but make not a bond of love.

After you have exhausted what there is in business, politics, conviviality, and so on — have found that none of these finally satisfy, or permanently wear — what remains? Nature remains.