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1 " The most difficult thing for a wise woman to do is to pretend to be a foolish one. "
― W. Somerset Maugham , Mrs Craddock
2 " Happily men don't realise how stupid they are, or half the world would commit suicide. Knowledge is a will-of-the-wisp, fluttering ever out of the traveller's reach; and a weary journey must be endured before it is even seen. It is only when a man knows a good deal that he discovers how unfathomable is his ignorance. The man who knows nothing is satisfied that there is nothing to know, consequently that he knows everything; and you may more easily persuade him that the moon is made of green cheese than that he is not omniscient. "
3 " With old and young great sorrow is followed by a sleepless night, and with the old great joy is as disturbing; but you, I suppose, finds happiness more natural and its rest is not disturbed by it. "
4 " Marriage is always a hopeless idiocy for a woman who has enough of her own to live upon. "
5 " There is nothing so difficult as to persuade men that they are ignorant. Bertha, exaggerating the seriousness of the affair, thought it charlatanry to undertake a post without knowledge and without capacity. Fortunately that is not the opinion of the majority, or the government of this enlightened country could not proceed. "
6 " I myself stand on one side and the rest of the world on the other. There is an abyss between, that no power can cross, a strange barrier more insuperable than a mountain of fire. Husband and wife know nothing of one another. However ardent their passion, however intimate their union, they are never one; they are scarcely more to one another than strangers. "
7 " Nothing is more tedious than to talk with persons who treat your most obvious remarks as startling paradoxes and Edward suffered likewise from that passion for argument which is the bad talkers’ substitution for conversation. People who cannot talk are always proud of their dialectic. They want to modify your tritest observations and even if you suggest the day is fine, insist on arguing it out. "
8 " After a Turkey carpet and dining-room table, there's nothing so comfy as a footstool. A chair always makes me feel respectable, and dull. "
9 " People who live on volcanoes forget all about it; and you'd soon get used to sitting on barrels of gunpowder if you had no armchair. "
10 " And the sunbeams promised life and happiness and the glory of the unknown. "
11 " The elm is the most respectable of trees, over-pompous if anything, but perfectly well-bred, and the shade it casts is no ordinary shade, but solid and self-assured as befits the estate of a country family. "
12 " She found unexpected satisfaction in the half-forgotten masterpieces of the past, in poets not quite divine whom fashion had left on one side, in the playwright, novelists, and essayists whose remembrance lives only with the bookworm. It is a relief sometimes to look away from the bright sun of perfect achievement; and the writers who appealed to their age and not to posterity have by contrast a subtle charm. Undazzled by their splendor, one may discern more easily their individualities and the spirit of their time; they have pleasant qualities not always found among their betters, and there is even a certain pathos in their incomplete success. "
13 " Oh, you can't imagine how frightfully dull is a really good man "
14 " I've learnt by long experience that people generally keep their voices to themselves, but insist on throwing their virtues in your face. "
15 " Women are by nature spiteful and intolerant; when you find one who exercises charity, it proves that she wants it very badly herself. "
16 " And the words thrilled Bertha like poetry. "
17 " One struggles to know good from evil, but really they're often so very much alike. "
18 " She knew that she was unstable as water and variable as the summer winds. "
19 " Time dulls the most exquisite emotions and softens the most heart-rending grief; "
20 " With greater knowledge came greater curiosity. "
