''Here and there, human nature may be great in times of trial, but generally speaking it is its weakness and not its strength that appears in a sick chamber.''
''To look almost pretty, is an acquisition of higher delight to a girl who has been looking plain the first fifteen years of her life, than a beauty from her cradle can ever receive.''
''Husbands and wives generally understand when opposition will be vain.''
''Fortunately for those who pay their court through such foibles, a fond mother, though, in pursuit of praise for her children, the most rapacious of human beings, is likewise the most credulous; her demands are exorbitant; but she will swallow any thing.''
''Give a girl an education and introduce her properly into the world, and ten to one but she has the means of settling well, without further expense to anybody.''
''Surprizes are foolish things. The pleasure is not enhanced, and the inconvenience is often considerable.''
''There is something so amiable in the prejudices of a young mind, that one is sorry to see them give way to the reception of more general opinions.''
''It is not time or opportunity that is to determine intimacy;Mit is disposition alone. Seven years would be insufficient to make some people acquainted with each other, and seven days are more than enough for others.''
''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.''
''It was the misfortune of poetry, to be seldom safely enjoyed by those who enjoyed it completely; and that the strong feelings which alone could estimate it truly, were the very feelings which ought to taste it but sparingly.''
''I am afraid that the pleasantness of an employment does not always evince its propriety.''
''Vanity and pride are different things, though the words are often used synonymously. A person may be proud without being vain. Pride relates more to our opinion of ourselves, vanity to what we would have others think of us.''
''To flatter and follow others, without being flattered and followed in turn, is but a state of half enjoyment.''
''Human nature is so well disposed towards those who are in interesting situations, that a young person, who either marries or dies, is sure of being kindly spoken of.''
''Business, you know, may bring money, but friendship hardly ever does.''
''Nobody can tell what I suffer! But it is always so. Those who do not complain are never pitied.''
''It is very unfair to judge any body's conduct, without an intimate knowledge of their situation. Nobody, who has not been in the interior of a family, can say what difficulties of any individual of that family may be.''
''There are secrets in all families.''
''An engaged woman is always more agreeable than a disengaged. She is satisfied with herself. Her cares are over, and she feels that she may exert all her powers of pleasing without suspicion. All is safe with a lady engaged; no harm can be done.''
''There seems almost a general wish of descrying the capacity and undervaluing the labour of the novelist, and of slighting the performances which have only genius, wit, and taste to recommend them.''
''If things are going untowardly one month, they are sure to mend the next.''
''For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbours, and laugh at them in our turn?''
''Let no one presume to give the feelings of a young woman on receiving the assurance of that affection of which she has scarcely allowed herself to entertain a hope.''
''Goldsmith tells us, that when lovely woman stoops to folly, she has nothing to do but to die; and when she stoops to be disagreeable, it is equally to be recommended as a clearer of ill-fame.''
''What dreadful hot weather we have! It keeps me in a continual state of inelegance.''
''It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.''
''To sit in the shade on a fine day, and look upon verdure is the most perfect refreshment.''
''A Mr. (save, perhaps, some half dozen in the nation,) always needs a note of explanation.''
''My idea of good company ... is the company of clever, well-informed people who have a great deal of conversation; that is what I call good company.''
''The public ... is rather apt to be unreasonably discontented when a woman does marry again, than when she does not.''
''One does not love a place the less for having suffered in it, unless it has been all suffering, nothing but suffering.''
''Where youth and diffidence are united, it requires uncommon steadiness of reason to resist the attraction of being called the most charming girl in the world.''
''It was a sweet view—sweet to the eye and the mind. British verdure, British culture, British comfort, seen under a sun bright, without being oppressive.''
''Respect for right conduct is felt by every body.''
''When any two young people take it into their heads to marry, they are pretty sure by perseverance to carry their point, be they ever so poor, or ever so imprudent, or ever so little likely to be necessary to each other's comfort.''
''Good-humoured, unaffected girls, will not do for a man who has been used to sensible women. They are two distinct orders of being.''
''It is always incomprehensible to a man that a woman should ever refuse an offer of marriage. A man always imagines a woman to be ready for anybody who asks her.''
''Undoubtedly ... there is a meanness in all the arts which ladies sometimes condescend to employ for captivation. What bears affinity to cunning is despicable.''
''One has not great hopes from Birmingham. I always say there is something direful in the sound.''
''No man is offended by another man's admiration of the woman he loves; it is the woman only who can make it a torment.''
''The post-office had a great charm at one period of our lives. When you have lived to my age, you will begin to think letters are never worth going through the rain for.''
''One man's style must not be the rule of another's.''
''How quick come the reasons for approving what we like!''
''One half of the world cannot understand the pleasures of the other.''
''A mind lively and at ease, can do with seeing nothing, and can see nothing that does not answer.''
''A person who can write a long letter with ease, cannot write ill.''
''Woman is fine for her own satisfaction alone. No man will admire her the more, no woman will like her the better for it. Neatness and fashion are enough for the former, and a something of shabbiness or impropriety will be most endearing to the latter.''
''I am pleased that you have learned to love a hyacinth. The mere habit of learning to love is the thing; and a teachableness of disposition in a young lady is a great blessing.''
''You mistake me, my dear. I have a high respect for your nerves. They are my old friends. I have heard you mention them with consideration these twenty years at least.''
''But Shakespeare one gets acquainted with without knowing how. It is a part of an Englishman's constitution. His thoughts and beauties are so spread abroad that one touches them everywhere; one is intimate with him by instinct.''
''Young ladies are delicate plants. They should take care of their health and their com plexion.''
''There are people, the more you do for them, the less they do for themselves.''
''Nothing is more deceitful than the appearance of humility. It is often only carelessness of opinion, and sometimes an indirect boast.''
''The trees, though not fully clothed, were in that delightful state, when further beauty is known to be at hand, and when, while much is actually given to the sight, more yet remains for the imagination.''
''Selfishness must always be forgiven you know, because there is no hope of a cure.''
''I consider a country-dance as an emblem of marriage. Fidelity and complaisance are the principle duties of both; and those men who do not choose to dance or to marry them selves, have no business with the partners or wives of the neighbors.''
''Where an opinion is general, it is usually correct.''
''A man would always wish to give a woman a better home than the one he takes her from; and he who can do it, where there is no doubt of her regard, must, I think, be the happiest of mortals.''
''There is safety in reserve, but no attraction. One cannot love a reserved person.''
''A woman, especially, if she have the misfortune of knowing anything, should conceal it as well as she can.''
''General benevolence, but not general friendship, made a man what he ought to be.''
''Anything is to be preferred or endured rather than marrying without affection.''
''The younger brother must help to pay for the pleasures of the elder.''
''There are certainly not so many men of large fortune in the world, as there are pretty women to deserve them.''
''Shakespeare one gets acquainted with without knowing how. It is part of a British man's constitution. His thoughts and beauties are so spread abroad that one touches them every where, one is intimate with him by instinct.—No man of any brain can open at a good part of one of his plays, without falling into the flow of his meaning immediately.''
''It will, I believe, be everywhere found, that as the clergy are, or are not what they ought to be, so are the rest of the nation.''
''Friendship is certainly the finest balm for the pangs of disappointed love.''
''The truth is, that in London it is always a sickly season. Nobody is healthy in London, nobody can be.''
''A lady's imagination is very rapid; it jumps from admiration to love, from love to matrimony in a moment.''
''Vanity working on a weak head, produces every sort of mischief.''
''With men he can be rational and unaffected, but when he has ladies to please, every feature works.''
''To be claimed as good, though in an improper style, is at least better than being rejected as no good at all.''
''An artist cannot do anything slovenly.''
''Like many other great moralists and preachers, she had been eloquent on a point in which her own conduct would ill bear examination.''
''Let other pens dwell on guilt and misery. I quit such odious subjects as soon as I can, impatient to restore every body, not greatly in fault themselves, to tolerable comfort, and to have done with all the rest.''
''What is right to be done cannot be done too soon.''
''On every formal visit a child ought to be of the party, by way of provision for discourse.''
''The ladies here probably exchanged looks which meant, "Men never know when things are dirty or not;" and the gentlemen perhaps thought each to himself, "Women will have their little nonsense and needless cares."''
''One cannot be always laughing at a man without now and then stumbling on something witty.''
''A single woman, with a very narrow income, must be a ridiculous, disagreeable, old maid! the proper sport of boys and girls; but a single woman, of good fortune, is always respectable, and may be as sensible and pleasant as anybody else.''
''Dress is at all times a frivolous distinction, and excessive solicitude about it often destroys its own aim.''
''There is no charm equal to tenderness of heart.''
''What instances must pass before them of ardent, disinterested, self-denying attachment, of heroism, fortitude, patience, resignation—of all the conflicts and the sacrifices that enno ble us most. A sick room may often furnish the worth of volumes.''
