I am no faint-heart when it comes to the unpleasant truth. Indeed I have always taken a bracing sort of pleasure in facing it.
The glitter of the great world, you know, is only so much froth and spume: you may look in vain for happiness there.
Dullness it is that perverts and corrups the spirit but it is always possible to look past the dullness, and see the bright, shining heart of things
Keats was getting a reputation just when he was too ill to appreciate it or build on it: his country was taking notice of him just when he would have to leave it.
If someone tries to use you as a tool, you shouldn’t mind it, because it is their choice and folly, not yours.
A girl should set her sights on a man who has money; or if not, who can expect to come into money; or if not, who has moneyed connections.
I have never understood why a woman must have a man to take her into dinner.
She sincerely wishes success, for her new life, and intends that no failure of effort, temper, or spirits on her part will jeopardise it.
That’s the way girls are isn’t it? They swear eternal friendship, and then as soon as a man’s in the case it’s all forgotten.
You can greet even the dullest acquaintance with pleasure, if you have forgotten their dreary story.
None of us like to think we are silly. But all must acknowledge that they are capable of silliness, from time to time
No young woman of good breeding should show exclusive partiality to one partner all night.
But we disposable women have to be realistic in this life, you know. Else we get itchy and discontented and start contemplating the kitchen knife and wondering whether it wouldn’t look nicer between someone’s shoulder-blades.
Perhaps grown women are beings of a good deal more complexity than cats
A happy marriage- a love match- is something overwhelming, and overpowering.
To marry is to narrow one’s possibilities horribly.
Without money and without connections- I have failed you!
I do not say that I could never be persuaded to sacrifice my reputation to passion- only that it would take a great deal.
It is presumptuous to draw conclusions about a person from what one has heard
Really, I protest–what is left for the satirical mind to invent when reality so surpasses it?
So this, Harriet thought, gazing at her black-clad reflection, was what bearing up looked like. The eyes in the mirror stared at her, somehow, while fixing themselves far
A balance, I think, is needed , ” Dr. Templeton said judiciously,”between the head and the heart: nothing easier to say: nothing harder to achieve.
I make a rule never to remember anything before last week. It makes life more interesting
It is our feelings that guide us and they can never lead us wrong
Probably no purer incitement to hatred existed, Lydia had found, than being told of anyone or anything: you will love him, her or it. The spirit immediately rose up like a fanged cobra.
Curious creatures we mortals are-how we do not know what we want, or how to get it if we do.
It is painful to see someone suffering what you must be suffering- watching someone you love be so cruelly hurt.
The stupidest people suddenly become a little cleverer when we learn that they think well of us
Everyone has something of the spiti that animates the artist
No expectations mean there is no risk of disappointment.
I am afraid I shall disappoint people’s expectations dreadfully.
I confess I found it somewhat insipid when I last went….it was all so prosy – so bonnety – so whisty and teacuppy – you see, the adjectives for it do not even exist, and I must invent them.
One hesitates to open a new chapter when the old one is not resolved.
Everything about everybody was very soon known by everybody else.