The Hand of Ethelberta

A half knowledge of another's life mostly does injustice to the life unknown.

She is one of those people who are known, as one may say, by subscription: everybody knows a little, till she is astonishingly well known altogether; but nobody knows her entirely.  She

Between himself and her there was that kind of division which is more insurmountable than enmity; for estrangements produced by good judgment will last when those of feeling break down in smiles. Not the lovers who part in passion, but the lovers who part in friendship, are those who most frequently part forever.

New love is brightest, and long love is greatest; but revived love is the tenderest thing known upon earth.

The truth is, that I never care much for reading what one ought to read; I wish I did, but I cannot help it.  And,

A woman who attempts a public career must expect to be treated as public property: what would be an intrusion on a domiciled gentlewoman is a tribute to me.

But in recognizing her ignorance of the ratio between words to women and deeds to women in the ethical code of the bachelor of the club, she forgot that human nature in the gross differs little with situation, and that a gift which, if the germs were lacking, no amount of training in clubs and coteries could supply, was mother-wit like her own.

Love begins with a sense of superior discernment.

Marriage is only an accident of situation, situation an accident of history, history of geography.