“The troublesome ones in a family are usually either the wits or the idiots.”

“The wit of a family is usually best received among strangers.”

“Will not a tiny speck very close to our vision blot out the glory of the world, and leave only a margin by which we see the blot? I know no speck so troublesome as self.”

“If a man goes a little too far along a new road, it is usually himself that he harms more than any one else.”

“... she took her husband's jokes and joviality as patiently as everything else, considering that "men would be so", and viewing the stronger sex in the light of animals whom it had pleased Heaven to make naturally troublesome, like bulls and turkey-cocks.”

“What right have such men to represent Christianity—as if it were an institution for getting up idiots genteelly?”

“I magnified, as usual, the impression any word or deed of mine could produce on others.”