A habit leads a man so gently in the beginning that he does not perceive he is led - with what silken threads and down what pleasant avenues it leads him! By and by, the soft silk threads become iron chains, and the pleasant avenues Avernus!
From Thomas Bailey Aldrich
To the mass of mankind - meaning also womankind - marriage may be the only possible thing; but to the individual, it may be the one thing impossible.
Everyone ought to wish to marry; some ought to be allowed to marry; and others ought to marry twice - to make the average good.
A man should have duties outside of himself; without them, he is a mere balloon, inflated with thin egotism and drifting nowhere.
What is newest to one in foreign countries is not always the people, but their surroundings, and those same little details of life and circumstance which make no impression on a man in his own land until he returns to it after a prolonged absence, and then they stand out very sharply for a while.
Everywhere on the Continent, the tourist is looked upon as a bird to be plucked, and presently the bird himself feebly comes to regard plucking as his proper destiny and abjectly holds out his wing so long as there is a feather left on it.
4 perspectives
3 perspectives
2 perspectives
1 perspectives