Anna Jameson

Conversation may be compared to a lyre with seven chords - philosophy, art, poetry, love, scandal, and the weather.

The only competition worthy a wise man is with himself.

We can sometimes love what we do not understand, but it is impossible completely to understand what we do not love.

All my experience of the world teaches me that in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, the safe and just side of a question is the generous and merciful side.

Childhood sometimes does pay a second visit to man, youth never.

What we truly and earnestly aspire to be, that in some sense we are. The mere aspiration, by changing the frame of the mind, for the moment realizes itself.