The Way We Live Now

Love is like any other luxury. You have no right to it unless you can afford it.

There was but one thing for him;- to persevere till he got her, or till he had finally lost her. And should the latter be his fate, as he began to fear that it would be, then, he would live, but live only, like a crippled man.

Throughout the world, the more wrong a man does, the more indignant is he at wrong done to him.

Her happiness, like that of most of us, was ever in the future,—never reached but always coming.

If you pardon all the evil done to you, you encourage others to do you evil!

every vice might be forgiven in a man and in a son, though every virtue was expected from a woman, and especially from a daughter.

A woman's weapon is her tongue.

Lovers with all the glories and all the graces are supposed to be plentiful as blackberries by girls of nineteen, but have been proved to be rare hothouse fruits by girls of twenty-nine.

In such families as [Nidderdale's], when such results have been achieved, it is generally understood that matters shall be put right by an heiress. [....] Rank squanders money; trade makes it; -- and then trade purchases rank by re-gilding its splendour

Of course he had committed forgery;--of course he had committed robbery. That, indeed, was nothing, for he had been cheating and forging and stealing all his life.

There is the review intended to sell a book, — which comes out immediately after the appearance of the book, or sometimes before it; the review which gives reputation, but does not affect the sale, and which comes a little later; the review which snuffs a book out quietly; the review which is to raise or lower the author a single peg, or two pegs, as the case may be; the review which is suddenly to make an author, and the review which is to crush him.

A newspaper that wishes to make its fortune should never waste its columns and weary its readers by praising anything.

I have all the world to choose from, but no reason whatever for a choice.

She went up to her room, disembarrassed herself of her finery,

After all, then, she was not a clever woman,—not more clever than other women around her!

He liked to be kindly treated, to be praised and petted, to be well fed and caressed; and they who so treated him were his chosen friends. He had in this the instincts of a horse, not approaching the higher sympathies of a dog.

As the high mountains are intersected by deep valleys, as puritanism in one age begets infidelity in the next, as in many countries the thickness of the winter's ice will be in proportion to the number of the summer musquitoes, so was the keenness of the hostility displayed on this occasion in proportion to the warmth of the support which was manifested. As the great man was praised, so also was he abused.

It was a great thing,—a very great thing;—he had no hesitation in saying that it was one of the greatest things out. He didn't believe a greater thing had ever come out.

Perhaps also Roger felt that were he to take up the cudgels for an argument he might be worsted in the combat, as in such combats success is won by practised skill rather than by truth.

If one wants to keep one's self straight, one has to work hard at it, one way or the other. I suppose it all comes from the fall of Adam.

Shall a woman be flayed alive because it is unfeminine in her to fight for her own skin?

She had no ambition to write a good book, but was painfully anxious to write a book that the critics should say was good.

Land is a luxury, and of all luxuries is the most costly. Now

A liar has many points to his favour,—but he has this against him, that unless he devote more time to the management of his lies than life will generally allow, he cannot make them tally.

Those who depart must have earned such sorrow before it can be really felt.

Of all reviews, the crushing review is the most popular, as being the most readable.

One seems inclined to think sometimes that any fool might do an honest business. But fraud requires a man to be alive and wide awake at every turn!

You can run down a demi-god only by making him out to be a demi-devil. These