Obstinacy and contradiction are like a paper kite; they are only kept up while you pull against them.
The best wives have been brought up in a family where there has been a subordination to men. Forsaken widows and disappointed aunts set up a hostile warfare against the other sex, and inculcate early prejudices in young women’s minds, which generally take too strong root to be eradicated.
People are generally in the end obliged to make an apology for those very virtues which alone dignify human nature. Friendship, good-nature, and generosity have often conducted a man to jail, where he has been obliged, before he could obtain assistance, to confess himself a fool, and to promise to divest himself of all such companions for the future; or, to adopt the most effectual method, totally to disavow the acquaintance of those virtues altogether, and pretend that they assumed the more worthy form and disguise of discretion and worldly wisdom, which authorised him to act as he did for the sake of his own interest.
Love often turns to the greatest hatred, as the sharpest vinegar is made from the sweetest sugar.
Economy is often tempted into expense, merely from the cheapness of it.