My wife says you have been singing like an angel,’ he said to Becky. Now there are angels of two kinds, and both sorts, it is said, are charming in t… - William Makepeace Thackeray

it is the ordinary lot of people to have no friends if they themselves care for nobody

Follow your honest convictions, and stay strong.

The best of women (I have heard my grandmother say) are hypocrites. We don't know how much they hide from us: how watchful they are when they seem most artless and confidential: how often those frank smiles, which they wear so easily, are traps to cajole or elude or disarm-I don't mean in your mere coquettes, but your domestic models, and paragons of female virtue. Who has not seem a woman hide the dulness of a stupid husband or coax the fury of a savage one? We accept this amiable slavishness, and praise a woman for it; we call this pretty treachery truth. A good housewife is of necessity a humbug.