."

Walpole, caustic and critical, regarded this lady as undeniably witty.

It was Hannah More who said: "There are but two bad things in this
world--sin and bile."

Miss Thackeray quotes several epigrammatic definitions from her friend
Miss Evans, as:

"A privileged person: one who is so much a savage when thwarted that
civilized persons avoid thwarting him."

"A musical woman: one who has strength enough to make much noise and
obtuseness enough not to mind it."

"Ouida" has given us some excellent examples of epigram, as:

"A pipe is a pocket philosopher, a truer one than Socrates, for it never
asks questions. Socrates must have been very tiresome, when one thinks
of it."

"Dinna ye meddle, Tam; it's niver no good a threshin' other folks' corn;
ye allays gits the flail agin' i' yer own eye somehow."

"Epigrams are the salts of life; but they wither up the grasses of
foolishness, and naturally the grasses hate to be sprinkled therewith."

"A man never is so honest as when he speaks well of himself. Men are
always optimists when they look inward, and pessimists when they look
round them."

"Nothing is so pleasant as to display your worldly wisdom in epigram and
dissertation, but it is a trifle tedious to hear another person display
theirs."

"When you talk yourself you think how witty, how original, how acute you
are; but when another does so, you are very apt to think only, 'What a
crib from Rochefoucauld!'"

"Boredom is the ill-natured pebble that always _will_ get in the golden
slipper of the pilgrim of pleasure."

"It makes all the difference in life whether hope is left or--left out!"

"A frog that dwelt in a ditch spat at a worm that bore a lamp.

"'Why do you do that?' said the glow-worm.

"'Why do you shine?' said the frog."

"Calumny is the homage of our contemporaries, as some South Sea
Islanders spit on those they honor."

"Hived bees get sugar because they will give back honey. All existence
is a series of equivalents."

"'Men are always like Horace,' said the Princess. 'They admire rural
life, but they remain, for all that, with Augustus.'"

"If the Venus de Medici could be animated into life, women would only
remark that her waist was large."

* * * * *

The brilliant Frenchwomen whose very names seem to sparkle as we write
them, yet of whose wit so little has been preserved, had an especial
facility for condensed cynicism.

Think of Madame du