An aristocracy in a republic is like a chicken whose head has been cut off; it may run about in a lively way, but in fact it is dead.

She had all the sentimentality of her generation, and this sentimentality, growing like a green moss over her spirit, helped to conceal its texture of stone, if not from others, at any rate from herself. She was convinced that she was a woman of profound sensibility.

Always be civil to the girls, you never know who they may marry’ is a aphorism which has saved many an English spinster from being treated like an Indian widow.

Oh poor Octave, no luck at all, as usual,” said Madame Rocher, “he is still with his regiment, still only a captain. Of course, if it hadn’t been for this wretched war, he would be at least a colonel by now.

Men, in general, are so treacherous, so envious, and so cruel that it is a comfort to find one who is only weak.

Houses are entirely different when you know them well, she thought, and on first acquaintance even more different from their real selves, more deceptive about their real character than human beings.

I think Linda realized there and then what it took me years to learn, that the behaviour of civilized man really has nothing to do with nature, that all is artificiality and art more or less perfected.

I have often noticed that when women look at themselves in every reflection, and take furtive peeps into their looking-glasses, it is hardly ever, as is generally supposed, from vanity, but much more often from a feeling that all is not quite as it should be.

But I couldn’t think it more hateful of them to have taken my fur tippet. Burglars never seem to realize one might feel the cold. How would they like it if I took away their wife’s shawl?

Nobody ought to write books before they’re thirty. I hate precocity.