There are people who go through life as if they were going to their own funeral—and did not enjoy it.
I would rather have for a friend the most thorough-paced scamp, with a generous heart, than the most respectable, canting, whining, Pharisee.
To stand in a rarefied atmosphere on a mountain height and view the struggles of ordinary mortals below may be poetic, but it is very lonely.
A woman may defy the world for a man she loves, and imagine that he will love her for the sacrifice, but no greater mistake can be made. Men are not so constituted. When he sees her standing alone, dishonored, a mark for the finger of scorn, her charm for him is forever lost.
Realism is the grave of love.