“Freedom begins between the ears.”
“You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you.”
“To be fond of dancing was a certain step towards falling in love.”
“I have not the pleasure of understanding you.”
“For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbours, and laugh at them in our turn?”
“There are very few of us who have heart enough to be really in love without encouragement.”
“Happiness in marriage is entirely a matter of chance.”
“A lady's imagination is very rapid; it jumps from admiration to love, from love to matrimony, in a moment.”
“My good opinion once lost, is lost forever.”
“Vanity and pride are different things, though the words are often used synonymously. Pride relates more to our opinion of ourselves, vanity to what we would have others think of us.”
“I could easily forgive his pride, if he had not mortified mine.”
“Books ... hold within them the gathered wisdom of humanity, the collected knowledge of the world's thinkers, the amusement and excitement built up by the imaginations of brilliant people.”
“I made up my mind long ago to follow one cardinal rule in all my writing — to be clear.”
“The history of science is full of revolutionary advances that required small insights that anyone might have had, but that, in fact, only one person did.”
“Generals are, as a matter of course, allowed to be far more idiotic than ordinary human beings are permitted to be.”
“If you're going to write a story, avoid contemporary references. They date a story and they have no staying power.”
“[S]cientific writing is abhorrently stylized and places a premium on poor quality.”
“There is no way of being almost funny or mildly funny or fairly funny or tolerably funny. You are either funny or not funny and there is nothing in between.”
“Straightforward preaching spoils the effectiveness of a story. If you can't resist the impulse to improve your fellow human beings, do it subtly.”
“Self-education is, I firmly believe, the only kind of education there is.”