Nevertheless, life and death are mysterious states, and we know little of the resources of either.
There is a faculty in man that will acknowledge the unseen. He may scout and scare religion from him; but if he does, superstition perches near.
Thus fortified I might take my rest in peace. But dreams come through stone walls, light up dark rooms, or darken light ones, and their persons make their exists and their entrances as they please, and laugh at locksmiths.
You will do well to take advantage of Madame’s short residence to get up your French a little… You will be glad of this, my dear, when you have reached France, where you will find they speak nothing else.
In my time first cousins did not meet like strangers. But we are learning modesty from the Americans, and old English ways are too gross for us.
Have not women preferred hatred to indifference, and the reputation of witchcraft, with all its penalties, to absolute insignificance?
I am afraid we women are factionists; we always take a side, and nature has formed us for advocates rather than judges.
(…) and I tell you, Austin Ruthyn, if you won’t look about and marry somebody, somebody may possibly marry you.
You must come with me, loving me, to death; or else hate me, and still come with me.
If your dear heart is wounded, my wild heart bleeds with yours.
Although I felt very weak, I did not feel ill; and strength, one always fancies, is a thing that may be picked up when we please.
I remember everything about it—with an effort. I see it all, as divers see what is going on above them, through a medium, dense, rippling, but transparent.
No one likes a straight road but the man who pays for it, or who, when he travels, is brute enough to wish to get to his journey’s end.
But to die as lovers may – to die together, so that they may live together.
The precautions of nervous people re infectious, and persons of a like temperament are pretty sure, after a time, to imitate them.
But curiosity is a restless and unscrupulous passion, and no one girl can endure, with patience, that hers should be baffled by another.
Girls are caterpillars while they live in the world, to be finally butterflies when the summer comes; but in the meantime there are grubs and larvae, don’t you see – each with their peculiar propensities, necessities and structure.
You are mine, you shall be mine, you and I are one for ever.
but curiosity is a restless and scrupulous passion, and no one girl can endure, with patience, that hers should be baffled by another.