Well, we must live and learn.
But her mind had never been in such perturbation; and it needed a very strong effort to appear attentive and cheerful till the usual hour of separating allowed her the relief of quiet reflection.
She would not calculate, she would not compare. She would only smile and assert.
I believe it often happens that a man, before he has quite made up his own mind, will distinguish the sister or intimate friend of the woman he is really thinking of more than the woman herself.
No doubt he is a sensible man, and I suppose may have a natural talent for-thinks strongly and clearly-and when he takes a pen in hand, his thoughts naturally find proper words.
Any thing interests between those who love; and any thing will serve as introduction to what is near the heart.
She was heartily ashamed of her ignorance. A misplaced shame. Where people wish to attach, they should always be ignorant. To come with a well-informed mind is to come with an inability of administering to the vanity of others, which a sensible person would always wish to avoid. A woman especially, if she have the misfortune of knowing anything, should conceal it as well as she can.
You must give me leave to judge for myself, and pay me the compliment of believing what I say.
You have liked many a stupider person.
Oh! I am delighted with the book! I should like to spend my whole life in reading it. I assure you, if it had not been to meet you, I would not have come away from it for all the world.
I do not believe a word of it, my dear. If he had been so very agreeable, he would have talked to Mrs. Long. But I can guess how it was; everybody says that he is eat up with pride, and I dare say he had heard somehow that Mrs. Long does not keep a carriage, and had come to the ball in a hack chaise.
Nothing, on the contrary, could be more natural; and while able to suppose that it cost him a few struggles to relinquish her, she was ready to allow it a wise and desirable measure for both, and could very sincerely wish him happy.
At his own ball he offended two or three young ladies, by not asking them to dance; and I spoke to him twice myself, without receiving an answer. Could there be finer symptoms? Is not general incivility the very essence of love?
We are told to “despair of nothing we would attain,” as “unwearied diligence our point would gain.
I am worn out with civility. I have been talking incessantly all night with nothing to say.
I have courted prepossession and ignorance, and driven reason away, where either were concerned.
Novels are all so full of nonsense and stuff; there has not been a tolerably decent one come out since Tom Jones, except The Monk; I read that t’other day; but as for all the others, they are the stupidest things in creation.
Too soon did she find herself at the drawing room door. And after pausing a moment for what she knew would not come, for a courage which the outside of no door had ever supplied to her, she turned the lock in desperation and the lights of the drawing room and all the collected family were before her.
You have gained a new source of enjoyment, and it is well to have as many holds upon happiness as possible.
I must be more in want of a friend, or an agreeable companion, than I have yet been, to take the trouble of conquering any body’s reserve to procure one.