Her desire to think well of herself had at least the element of humility that it always needed to be supported by proof.
I have heard many a young unmarried lady exclaim with a bold sweep of conception, “Ah me! I wish I were a widow!” Mrs. Keith was precisely the widow that young unmarried ladies wish to be. With her diamonds in her dressing-case and her carriage in her stable, and without a feather’s weight of encumbrance, she offered a finished example of satisfied ambition.
You’re like a picture; you ought to be enclosed in a gilt frame and stand against the wall.
When I read a novel my imagination starts off at a gallop and leaves the narrator hidden in a cloud of dust; I have to come jogging twenty miles back to the denouement.
When once the gate is opened to self-torture, the whole army of fiends files in.
She was afraid,′ said Mrs. Bread, very confidently; ’she has always been afraid, or at least for a long time. That was the real trouble, sir. She was like a fair peach, I may say, with just one little speck. She had one little sad spot. You pushed her into the sunshine, sir, and it almost disappeared. Then they pulled her back into the shade and in a moment it began to spread. Before we knew it she was gone. She was a delicate creature.
He envied Miss Barrace at any rate her power of not being. She seemed, with little cries and protests and quick recognitions, movements like the darts of some fine high-feathered free-pecking bird, to stand before life as before some full shop-window. You could fairly hear, as she selected and pointed, the tap of her tortoise-shell against the glass.
She had once heard an enthusiastic musician, out of patience with a gifted bungler, declare that a fine voice is really an obstacle to singing properly; and it occurred to her that it might perhaps be equally true that a beautiful face is an obstacle to the acquisition of charming manners.
Living as he now lived was like reading a good book in a poor translation – a meagre entertainment for a young man who felt that he might have been an excellent linguist. He.
Take things more easily. Don’t ask yourself so much whether this or that is good for you. Don’t question your conscience so much – it will get out of tune, like a strummed piano. Keep it for great occasions. Don’t try so much to form your character – it’s like trying to pull open a rosebud. Live as you like best, and your character will form itself.
So far had Douglas presented his picture when someone put a question. “And what did the former governess die of? – of so much respectability?” Our friend’s answer was prompt. “That will come out. I don’t anticipate.
You will think you take generous views of her; but you will never begin to know through what a strange sea of feeling she passed before she accepted you. As she stood there in front of you the other day, she plunged into it. She said ‘Why not?’ to something which, a few hours earlier, had been inconceivable. She turned about on a thousand gathered prejudices and traditions as on a pivot, and looked where she had never looked hitherto.
Oh, it was a trap – not designed but deep – to my imagination, to my delicacy, perhaps to my vanity; to whatever in me was most excitable.
He was absolutely, on this occasion, a living, detestable, dangerous presence.
The church was simply the former chapel of the castle, fronting upon its grass-grown court, which, however, was of generous enough width to have given up its quaintest corner to a little graveyard. Here the very headstones themselves seemed to sleep, as they slanted into the grass.
She was keeping her head for a reason, for a cause; and the labour of this detachment, with the labour of her forcing the pitch of it down, held them together in the steel hoop of an intimacy compared with which artless passion would have been but a beating of the air. Her.
My dear young lady,′ said her distinguished friend, ‘isn’t “to live” exactly what I’m trying to persuade you to take the trouble to do?
When you are embarrassed, do as you think best, and you will do very well. When you are in a difficulty, judge for yourself.
I would live for you still – if I could.” Her eyes closed for a little, as if, withdrawn into herself, she were for a last time trying. “But I can’t!” she said as she raised them again to take leave of him. She couldn’t indeed, as but too promptly and sharply appeared, and he had no vision of her after this that was anything but darkness and doom.
Fanny Assingham had at this moment the sense as of a large heaped dish presented to her intelligence and inviting it to a feast – so thick were the notes of intention in this remarkable speech.