Top 240 Seldom Quotes

Historically, the U.S.’s big launchers fly seldom enough that their costs are dominated by annual upkeep of facilities and staff, not by the actual cost of each launch. The expensive part is maintaining the launch capability, not actually conducting launches.

Heroes always make the right decision; I find that seldom happens in my life.

It has become an accepted tenet that kids will rarely listen to their parents but seldom fail to imitate them. Communicating the message has never been a good substitute for ‘showing up’ and embodying the message.

I came out of retirement to run a start-up. Historically, I seldom used all of my vacation time, and the last sick day I took was in 1992. I am a sick puppy.

Incidents of racial bias and implicit bias happen to African-Americans of every social class daily in America. White people seldom notice or dwell on these as they encounter the quotidian events of their day.

Coming from a farming background, I saw nothing out of the ordinary in running barefoot, although it seemed to startle the rest of the athletics world. I have always enjoyed going barefoot and when I was growing up I seldom wore shoes, even when I went into town.

Beauty is aspirational – an ideal that mortals approach but seldom attain.

I’m ashamed to admit that I very seldom read poetry, even though many of my friends are poets.

My dad always watched wrestling and I seldom did.

He who is a slave to his stomach seldom worships God.

Imams seldom condemn terror. And in their silence, in the void, acceptance – encouragement even – is assumed.

Love often leads on to ambition, but seldom does one return from ambition to love.

He who seldom speaks, and with one calm well-timed word can strike dumb the loquacious, is a genius or a hero.

Advice is seldom welcome; and those who want it the most always like it the least.

A proud man is seldom a grateful man, for he never thinks he gets as much as he deserves.

I think its really matured a lot. I like the fact that there is now more to do there than gamble, since I don’t do a lot of that. The people are great. I seldom have time for vacations and when I do I prefer the beach instead of the desert.

No matter how beautiful the paper, artwork, printing, and binding, I’m seldom drawn to a book unless it’s by a writer I care about or on a subject that appeals to me.

What appears in newspapers is often new but seldom true.

Famous remarks are very seldom quoted correctly.

Creativity seldom thrives in an atmosphere of great discipline or scrutiny. That’s one reason we tend not to want our leaders to get too creative.

I found that our Soviet espionage efforts had virtually never, or had very seldom, produced any worthwhile political or economic intelligence on the Soviet Union.

You have to remember that I was a bright but simple fellow from Canada who seldom, if ever, met another writer, and then only a so-called literary type that occasionally sold a story and meanwhile worked in an office for a living.

The young very seldom lead anything in our country today. It’s been quite some time since a younger generation pushed an older one to a higher standard.

Kids enjoy laughing and are seldom bored when they find something funny. They also ask questions, often to adults, because they understand that the more words they can comprehend about a funny story or a joke, the more they’ll enjoy it.

For the human mind is seldom at stay: If you do not grow better, you will most undoubtedly grow worse.

Technology writers are seldom subject to frenzied, Beatlemania-esque paroxysms of public attention. June 29, 2007, was the exception. I was in the wrong place – Apple’s Fifth Avenue store in Manhattan – with the right device. The iPhone.

They very seldom let me lose my cool. They made me like I was Polly Perfect, which was ridiculous so that when I bump into kids on the street they’d say ‘I wish my Mom were like you.’

I have found from experience that it is often interesting and useful to start from the edges and work inward – another flaw of mine. I seldom approach things directly. I would have made a great moth.

How seldom we weigh our neighbor in the same balance with ourselves.

The realities of the world seldom measure up to the sublime designs of human imagination.

Tyrants seldom want pretexts.

A resolution to avoid an evil is seldom framed till the evil is so far advanced as to make avoidance impossible.

My greatest concern is that Mitt Romney seldom addresses the social issues publicly… I’m referring to the sanctity of human life, the traditional definition of marriage, and religious liberty.

Although you’ll seldom hear him do it, my dad sings really well. When I was a kid, we’d go hunting, and the old pickup truck had a radio in it. I have a lot of memories of coming home late at night and hearing my dad break out in song.

For my part, I confess I seldom listen to the players: one has so much to do, in looking about and finding out one’s acquaintance, that, really, one has no time to mind the stage. One merely comes to meet one’s friends, and show that one’s alive.

My crown is called content, a crown that seldom kings enjoy.

I seldom was ever off my seat on the bench during the game.

Honesty is seldom ingratiating and often discomfiting.

A woman seldom writes her mind but in her postscript.

Black women, whose experience is unique, are seldom recognized as a particular social-cultural entity and are seldom thought to be important enough for serious scholarly consideration.

Press on. Obstacles are seldom the same size tomorrow as they are today.

There are chapters in every life which are seldom read and certainly not aloud.

True friendship is like sound health; the value of it is seldom known until it is lost.

The rich are always advising the poor, but the poor seldom return the compliment.

Donald Trump was sharp; he was very perceptive. He was engaging. He had this expansive vocabulary, and he very seldom took breaks.

Market type influences everything a company does. Strategy and tactics for one market type seldom work for another.

Silence is not only golden, it is seldom misquoted.

Beauty is an outward gift which is seldom despised, except by those to whom it has been refused.

The owner of a company with supertight margins – say, a restaurant, retailer, or producer of commodity goods – would be a fool not to keep a close eye on the numbers. But when I make big decisions, numbers are seldom, if ever, the tiebreaker.

What is ugly about life is that it so often only provides uneasy half solutions that are so seldom pure and tragic ones.

Life is made up of constant calls to action, and we seldom have time for more than hastily contrived answers.

Laws fixed, certain, and uniform, are said to be the distinguishing traits of civilized from savage communities. In these last, seldom are any laws, unless it be the arbitrary and uncertain will of the strongest.

Terrorism has become the systematic weapon of a war that knows no borders or seldom has a face.

He who doesn’t consider himself is seldom considerate of others.

I don’t think that a leader can control, to any great extent, his destiny. Very seldom can he step in and change the situation if the forces of history are running in another direction.

Periods of tranquillity are seldom prolific of creative achievement. Mankind has to be stirred up.

Substantive and procedural law benefits and protects landlords over tenants, creditors over debtors, lenders over borrowers, and the poor are seldom among the favored parties.

Now it is evident that a little insight into the customs of every people is necessary to insure a kindly communication; this, joined with patience and kindness, will seldom fail with the natives of the interior.

There is one type of ideal woman very seldom described in poetry – the old maid, the woman whom sorrow or misfortune prevents from fulfilling her natural destiny.

It seldom happens that any felicity comes so pure as not to be tempered and allayed by some mixture of sorrow.

What is easy is seldom excellent.

With any piece of writing, you’re hoping that it will change something, and it seldom does.

Misfortune seldom intrudes upon the wise man; his greatest and highest interests are directed by reason throughout the course of life.

Look at our society. Everyone wants to be thin, but nobody wants to diet. Everyone wants to live long, but few will exercise. Everybody wants money, yet seldom will anyone budget or control their spending.

Don’t think that because you haven’t heard from me for a while that I went to sleep. I am still here, like a spirit roaming the night. Thirsty, hungry, seldom stopping to rest.

To attempt to superimpose its views through the exercise of force, is seldom the part of intelligence; it is frequently the part of ignorance.

It is always safe to learn, even from our enemies; seldom safe to venture to instruct, even our friends.

Every one, more or less, loves Power, yet those who most wish for it are seldom the fittest to be trusted with it.

I seldom have my stuff up unless I’m testing it. If I’m worrying about a painting, I put it up and see if I detest it quickly or slowly. Otherwise I have things by other artists.

You seldom hear any young artists in country music.

Comics seldom move me the way I would be moved by a novel or movie.

I am a complete movie buff who still prefers to go for the late night show and seldom watch movies at home.

Conscience is a coward, and those faults it has not strength enough to prevent it seldom has justice enough to accuse.

Every moral teacher or spiritual adviser gives injunctions about how to live wisely and well. But life is so complicated and full of uncertainty that rules seldom tell us quite what to do.

I have never been a foodie and am seldom very hungry.

Children have neither a past nor a future. Thus they enjoy the present, which seldom happens to us.

A widow’s refusal of a lover is seldom so explicit as to exclude hope.

Women were seldom given quality assignments or adequate air time.

All I mean is, I’m not the kind of audience comedy directors want at a test screening because I seldom laugh, and if I do, it’s not very loud. That doesn’t mean I don’t like the movie.

Seldom does a member of either party have to be called down for inappropriate behavior on the House floor.

Rich men’s sons are seldom rich men’s fathers.

Seldom ever was any knowledge given to keep, but to impart; the grace of this rich jewel is lost in concealment.

The dog has seldom been successful in pulling man up to its level of sagacity, but man has frequently dragged the dog down to his.

In today’s world, everyone’s so clued into their iPhones, and communication is going by the wayside as far as one-on-one is concerned. It’s very seldom that I walk into a room and parents make their children say hello and have a social grace with one another.

Our ministry is supported entirely by faith, through the missions gifts of readers who receive my messages every three weeks. We seldom mention money, and we never burden supporters.

I think good-looking people seldom make good television. And American television studios almost concede before they start: ‘Well, it won’t be good, but at least it’ll be good-looking. We’ll have nice-looking girls in tight shirts with F.B.I. badges and fit-looking guys with lots of hair gel vaulting over things.’

Very learned women are to be found, in the same manner as female warriors; but they are seldom or ever inventors.

Groups that rose from poverty to prosperity seldom did so by having their own racial or ethnic leaders to follow.

Now, occultism is not like mystic faculty, and it very seldom works in harmony either with business aptitude in the things of ordinary life or with a knowledge of the canons of evidence in its own sphere.

The man who is gloomy, taciturn and lives in a world of doubt seldom achieves more than a bare living. There have been a few who have groaned their way through to a competence, but in proportion to that overwhelming number of souls who carry cheer through life, they are as nothing – mere drops in the bucket.

We invoke the sacrifices of our fallen heroes in the abstract, but we seldom take time to thank them individually.

I seldom reraise before the flop no matter what my hand is. By so doing, I’m able to disguise the strength of my hand and can trap unsuspecting opponents who interpret my smooth call as a sign of weakness.

I’ve been recognized very seldom. I think I just look different in person than I do as the character.

He who is void of virtuous attachments in private life is, or very soon will be, void of all regard for his country. There is seldom an instance of a man guilty of betraying his country, who had not before lost the feeling of moral obligations in his private connections.

Perhaps we too seldom reflect how much the life of Nature is one with the life of man, how unimportant or indeed merely seeming, the difference between them.

Seldom, very seldom, does complete truth belong to any human disclosure; seldom can it happen that something is not a little disguised, or a little mistaken.

I’ve noticed that some Democrats, who seldom mention their faith or maybe never mention their faith, will seize on to a phrase that Pope Francis may have said, and they want to attach themselves to that agenda. Political opportunists is what they are.

To have that kind of ovation, that happens very seldom for a lineman.

You just look at the world, and you see things unraveling, and you say, ‘I wonder what we ought to do?’ Things are seldom crystal clear.

We have very strong environmental laws in the United States and elsewhere around the world. The problem is that they’re seldom enforced.

Though I have seldom done anything to my own satisfaction, I am better satisfied with the translation of the New Testament than I ever expected to be. The language is, I believe, simple, plain, intelligible; and I have endeavored, I hope successfully, to make every sentence a faithful representation of the original.

Even in the lives of fishes, sensation is seldom a matter of one thing or another. Senses overlap. The lines between them often tend to be blurred, and the best that we can manage, by way of description from the outside, is to say that the senses of fishes appear to dominate one at a time.

The thing that I love about ‘Will & Grace’ is that there’s a clear-cut reason for my character to be there. I come in with the zinger. My character seldom has much to do with moving the story ahead. I know exactly what my job is there. It’s just a party, basically. I’m just having a ball.

Those who have happy homes seldom turn out badly.

Men seldom, or rather never for a length of time and deliberately, rebel against anything that does not deserve rebelling against.

I was seldom able to see an opportunity until it had ceased to be one.

In a world where it is so easy to neglect, deny, corrupt and suppress the truth, the scientist may find his discipline severe. For him, truth is so seldom the sudden light that shows new order and beauty; more often, truth is the uncharted rock that sinks his ship in the dark.

Political correctness is about denial, usually in the weasel circumlocutory jargon which distorts and evades and seldom stands up to honest analysis.

It is the greatest mistake to think that man is always one and the same. A man is never the same for long. He is continually changing. He seldom remains the same even for half an hour.

What troubles me most about my lovely country is that its children are seldom taught that American freedom will vanish, if, when they grow up, and in the exercise of their duties as citizens, they insist that our courts and policemen and prisons be guided by divine or natural law.

A man is never the same for long. He is continually changing. He seldom remains the same even for half an hour.

Since it is seldom clear whether intellectual activity denotes a superior mode of being or a vital deficiency, opinion swings between considering intellect a privilege and seeing it as a handicap.

Our vision of war is probably too influenced by the biggest one of all, World War II, where the forces of evil were so unambiguous and so relentless that there was no choice but to commit to total war and to demand unconditional surrender. Seldom, though, is it quite that clear cut.

We talk about politicians being in public life, but they seldom appear in the public space where everyone is free to appear as a citizen.

A conversation is a dialogue, not a monologue. That’s why there are so few good conversations: due to scarcity, two intelligent talkers seldom meet.

People seldom get the right platform or direction. I have seen a lot of people who did not get the right place to showcase their talent.

I work hard, and I tend to play hard. I very seldom rest hard.

Simple solutions seldom are. It takes a very unusual mind to undertake analysis of the obvious.

The reason I turn down 99% of a hundred, I mean a thousand, scripts is because romantic comedies are often very romantic but seldom very funny.

Injustice, poverty, slavery, ignorance – these may be cured by reform or revolution. But men do not live only by fighting evils. They live by positive goals, individual and collective, a vast variety of them, seldom predictable, at times incompatible.

Great and good are seldom the same man.

I don’t consider myself qualified to do a movie about international intrigue – I seldom leave the country.

But Hopes are Shy Birds flying at a great distance seldom reached by the best of Guns.

Needless to say, it was the greatest of privileges to serve with the selfless men and women – Iraqi and American and those of our coalition partners, civilian as well as military – who did the hard, dangerous work of the surge. There seldom was an easy period; each day was tough.

Anger is never without a reason, but seldom with a good one.

The international community spends much more time and resources managing crises than preventing them. But TV cameras are seldom there when a conflict is avoided, so it is difficult for governments and international organizations to make prevention a priority.

People seldom do what they believe in. They do what is convenient, then repent.

Rumors are always interesting, but they’re seldom right.

I know when I’m working I seldom get into trouble. My educated guess is that boredom has caused most of the problems with Hollywood celebrities.

You probably wouldn’t worry about what people think of you if you could know how seldom they do.

I am in the bad news business. Seldom do I get to report on puppies, rainbows, or the sounds of children giggling. Well, never.

Anger is never without an argument, but seldom with a good one.

One seldom expects the country’s president to adequately note the passing of a rocker, but Jimmy Carter’s assessment of Elvis Presley’s appeal – ‘energy, rebelliousness and good humor’ – is remarkably close to the mark.

True art selects and paraphrases, but seldom gives a verbatim translation.

The world is seldom what it seems; to man, who dimly sees, realities appear as dreams, and dreams realities.

Progress is seldom simple; it comes with costs and casualties, even challenges about whether a change represents an advance or a retreat.

I like to have my breakfast in bed, and I use that time to watch the recorded shows on my TiVo. I seldom watch shows in real time – I’m always at work.

I seldom deal in symbolisms; if there be hidden meanings in my verse, they are there without my knowledge.

When people contend for their liberty they seldom get anything for their victory, but new masters.

A simple enough pleasure, surely, to have breakfast alone with one’s husband, but how seldom married people in the midst of life achieve it.

A great reader seldom recognizes his solitude.

He was the only person caught in the collapse, and afterward, most of his work was recovered too, and it is still spoken of, when it is noted, with high regard, though seldom played.

What is the use of good painting? We want a spell cast upon the optical part of our existence! We seldom really see the world, but when we do, we become as still as a picture.

I seldom go into a natural history museum without feeling as if I were attending a funeral.

The cautious seldom err.

Tyrants are seldom free; the cares and the instruments of their tyranny enslave them.

I very seldom read back into what I’ve written.

You seldom get that in film where you’re lucky if you get any say at all in the final cut.

I seldom look back.

The state and the church seldom approve of anything I do. I don’t need their approval. I don’t aspire to the heterosexual nuclear family model.

Pride slays thanksgiving, but a humble mind is the soil out of which thanks naturally grow. A proud man is seldom a grateful man, for he never thinks he gets as much as he deserves.

Achievements, seldom credited to their source, are the result of unspeakable drudgery and worries.

The media understands the system only on the basis of ministers and governments. It seldom sympathises with the people who work within that system.

It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once.

Age seldom arrives smoothly or quickly. It’s more often a succession of jerks.

Black writers seldom get the opportunity to write superhero stories.

If you were to plot my success or failure, it goes, it very seldom stays on a high plateau.

Human felicity is produced not as much by great pieces of good fortune that seldom happen as by little advantages that occur every day.

It is seldom right to say that anything is true ‘according to Google.’ Google is the oracle of redirection. Go there for ‘hamadryad,’ and it points you to Wikipedia. Or the Free Online Dictionary. Or the Official Hamadryad Web Site (it’s a rock band, too, wouldn’t you know).

Great men are seldom over-scrupulous in the arrangement of their attire.

There comes not seldom a crisis in the life of men, of nations, and of worlds, when the old forms seem ready to decay, and the old rules of action have lost their binding force. The evils of existing systems obscure the blessings that attend them, and, where reform is needed, the cry is raised for subversion.

Over the years, my work became both my vocation and avocation. Since I enjoyed it so much, I never felt a great need to go outside for relaxation. Nevertheless, I became an avid photographer and traveler. Possibly my love for travel stems from the early years when my family seldom went away on vacation.

You have to remember we’re just performers, that we seldom have any kind of grasp on real life.

My mother and I were alike in one crucial respect: We may have been Russian by birth, but we were English in spirit. She was intensely reserved and private, and seldom showed what she was feeling.

I seldom end up where I wanted to go, but almost always end up where I need to be.

Men are sent into the world with bills of credit, and seldom draw to their full extent.

All a woman needs is a good bath, clean clothes, and for her hair to be combed. These things she can do herself. I very seldom go to the hairdresser, but when I do, I just marvel.

To be a minister means above all to become powerless, or in more precise terms, to speak with our powerlessness to the condition of powerlessness which is so keenly felt but so seldom expressed by the people of our age.

Beauty is an outward gift, which is seldom despised, except by those to whom it has been refused.

I seldom feel comfortable in a theatre. I always feel like I own a cinema. I feel equally happy in an empty one as a full one. Probably happier in an empty one!

Seldom in the history of medicine has the recognition of the most effective cure followed as swiftly on the heels of the discovery of a disease as the establishment of the complete effectiveness of iodothyrin and thyroidin followed the recognition of cachexia thyreopriva.

You seldom get a censorship attempt from a 14-year-old boy. It’s the adults who get upset.

Like most musicians, I’m good at becoming immersed in the music that I am currently working on. We seldom lift up our heads to contemplate even the music we will be doing in the future, let alone what we’ve done in the past.

Women artists, no matter how well recognized they are, are seldom given solo exhibitions or featured in significant group shows. They are never top-ranked in auction choices.

I like to decide the night before Thanksgiving that I’m gonna do it, and I’ll see what riff raff is around. Then I get that last-minute surge of energy. But if I had two weeks to plan, sometimes I wish I wasn’t doing it. But very seldom does that happen.

Religion, for better or for worse, has been politicized in blatant ways that have seldom been equaled in American elections.

God seldom suspends the laws of nature, just as God does not remove free will to keep evil people from doing evil things.

Restaurants in Chicago are seldom disappointing.

Very seldom in my fiction have I directly used the stories people have told me. I think ripping off people’s lives in fiction is dangerous. It also lacks imagination.

The biggest kick I get is to communicate with those who are exiled from the game – in hospitals, homes, prisons – those who have seldom seen a game, who can’t travel to a game, those who are blind.

I grow the vegetables my family eats. I grow enough, and we seldom buy from the market.

I seldom watch TV, but I often get caught up in cricket no matter what time they are on.

As fathers commonly go, it is seldom a misfortune to be fatherless; and considering the general run of sons, as seldom a misfortune to be childless.

What a child doesn’t receive he can seldom later give.

A man of genius has been seldom ruined but by himself.

Perhaps it should only be added that the Gorean master, though often strict, is seldom cruel. The girl knows, if she pleases him, her lot will be an easy one.

There’s an elusive element to comedy, but nobody gets it for free. That’s why comedians seldom criticise each other.

Those who govern, having much business on their hands, do not generally like to take the trouble of considering and carrying into execution new projects. The best public measures are therefore seldom adopted from previous wisdom, but forced by the occasion.

I thought I was very pretty without hair. Naked, more honest somehow. No glamor, just bald old me. I seldom wore wigs or hats. But some people must have thought I was an exhibitionist or a religious fanatic.

Negative books can be bestsellers, but seldom classics.

Life is about the gray areas. Things are seldom black and white, even when we wish they were and think they should be, and I like exploring this nuanced terrain.

Laws too gentle are seldom obeyed; too severe, seldom executed.

In an ideal world, an individual’s institutional power would be correlated perfectly with his or her value-add. In practice, this is seldom the case.

I’ve seldom seen a horny player walk into a bar and not let out exactly what he did for a living.

Anger is never without an argument, but seldom with a good one.

Advice is seldom welcome; and those who want it the most always want it the least.

Friendship increases in visiting friends, but in visiting them seldom.

We seldom call anybody lazy, but such as we reckon inferior to us, and of whom we expect some service.

To err is human also in so far as animals seldom or never err, or at least only the cleverest of them do so.

My interest in desperation lies only in that sometimes I find myself having become desperate. Very seldom do I start out that way. I can see of course that, in the abstract, thinking and all activity is rather desperate.

There are a lot of ‘chicken Christians.’ Chickens are generally afraid of life, and they seldom fly or reach their potential in life. And when a storm comes, all they seem to do is flap around the chicken yard, stirring up dirt and running to the chicken house.

Even though Jack Kennedy and I were about the same age and lived in the same neighborhood and attended the same elementary school, our paths seldom crossed during the years he lived in Brookline. I’m sure that in time, I would have gotten to know him better if he hadn’t moved away.

People seldom refuse help, if one offers it in the right way.

Paradoxically, since gay men rarely have gay parents, cultural transmission must come from friends or strangers (a problem since the generations so seldom mix in gay life).

A writer is seldom satisfied with the condition he finds himself in. We’re all given to fretting a lot.

Since most scientists are just a bit religious, and most religious are seldom wholly unscientific, we find humanity in a comical position. His scientific intellect believes in the possibility of miracles inside a black hole, while his religious intellect believes in them outside it.

As a literature of change driven by technology, science fiction presents religion to a part of the reading public that probably seldom goes to church.

Seldom has a politician left public office with more self-generated fanfare than Sen. William S. Cohen.

Rich men’s houses are seldom beautiful, rarely comfortable, and never original. It is a constant source of surprise to people of moderate means to observe how little a big fortune contributes to Beauty.

When you think about where are you going to find that big love of your life, you seldom think it’s someone you already know. You think it’s someone you’re yet to meet.

A mind at liberty to reflect on its own observations, if it produce nothing useful to the world, seldom fails of entertainment to itself.

I very seldom look at wrestling magazines. Whenever I do, I get angry.

Our kids seldom even get to see a movie. When we go to a movie, it’s an event – and we make it an event.

I’ve learned that people will seldom let you down if they understand that your destiny is in their hands, and vice versa.

She generally gave herself very good advice, (though she very seldom followed it).

I seldom think of politics more than eighteen hours a day.

The man who occupies the first place seldom plays the principal part.

Life holds one great but quite commonplace mystery. Though shared by each of us and known to all, seldom rates a second thought. That mystery, which most of us take for granted and never think twice about, is time.

A Protestant has seldom any mercy shown him, and a Jew, who turns Christian, is far from being secure.

Without change, something sleeps inside us, and seldom awakens. The sleeper must awaken.

Newt Gingrich seldom misses a chance to note that he is a historian.

I seldom look at myself to avoid any self-criticism.

In serial music, the series itself is seldom audible… What I’m interested in is a compositional process and a sounding music that are one in the same thing.

People’s ability to forget what they do not want to know, to overlook what is before their eyes, was seldom put to the test better than in Germany at that time.

Why is it that common sense is seldom common practice?

I watched ‘Who’ with a mixture of affection and exasperation through the eighties, always ready to cheer on the Doctor but seldom feeling that the series was playing to its strengths. Some of the adventures, revisited on DVD, turn out to be better than I remembered – others just as infuriating.

Numbers of the old people cannot read. Those who can seldom do.

The type of mind of Whitman’s, which seldom or never emerges as a mere mentality, an independent thinking and knowing faculty, but always as a personality, always as a complete human entity, never can expound itself, because its operations are synthetic and not analytic; its mainspring is love and not mere knowledge.

I am seldom home, as I keep travelling because of work.

A man’s heart may have a secret sanctuary where only one woman may enter, but it is full of little anterooms which are seldom vacant.

I don’t get recognised in London or at home either – very seldom anyway. Either that or I look so crazy no one wants to come up to me.

The public seldom forgive twice.

Witticism. A sharp and clever remark, usually quoted and seldom noted; what the Philistine is pleased to call a joke.

I ever will profess myself the greatest friend to those whose actions best correspond with their doctrine; which, I am sorry to say, is too seldom the case amongst those nations who pretend most to civilization.

Nothing you do for children is ever wasted. They seem not to notice us, hovering, averting our eyes, and they seldom offer thanks, but what we do for them is never wasted.

The voice of the people has been said to be the voice of God; and, however generally this maxim has been quoted and believed, it is not true to fact. The people are turbulent and changing, they seldom judge or determine right.

There is a pride, a self-love, in human minds that will seldom be kept so low as to make men and women humbler than they ought to be.

Women have seldom sufficient employment to silence their feelings; a round of little cares, or vain pursuits frittering away all strength of mind and organs, they become naturally only objects of sense.

Sometimes I’m asked if I do research for my stories. The answer is yes and no. No, in the sense that I seldom plow through books at the library to gather material. Yes, in the sense that the first fifteen years of my life turned out to be one big research project.

Popular opinions, on subjects not palpable to sense, are often true, but seldom or never the whole truth.