In music she had been always used to feel alone in the world.
It taught me to hope,′ said he, ’as I had scarcely ever allowed myself to hope before.
She is tolerable, but not handsome enough to tempt me.
Have you ever read Udolpho, Mr. Thorpe?” “Udolpho! Oh, Lord! Not I; I never read novels; I have something else to do.” Catherine, humbled and ashamed, was going to apologize for her question, but he prevented her by saying, “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.
The difference in Miss Denham’s countenance, the change from Miss Denham sitting in cold grandeur in Mrs. Parker’s drawing room, to be kept from silence by the efforts of others, to Miss Denham at Lady Denham’s elbow, listening and talking with smiling attention or solicitous eagerness, was very striking – and very amusing or very melancholy, just as satire or morality might prevail.
Still, however, she had enough to feel! It was agitation, pain, pleasure, a something between delight and misery.
What! do not you know who Miss Williams is? I am sure you must have heard of her before. She is a relation of the Colonel’s, my dear; a very near relation. We will not say how near, for fear of shocking the young ladies.
Oh! how heartily did she grieve over every ungracious sensation she had ever encouraged, every saucy speech she had ever directed towards him. For herself she was humbled; but she was proud of him.
Emma felt that she could not now show greater kindness than in listening.
In that moment, as they stood smiling at one another, Charlotte was conscious of several contradictory sensations, of which the chief were these: annoyance with herself for being incapable of governing her own actions, satisfaction that Sidney had won this very minor victory over her, amusement, embarrassment – an odd something between perturbation and pleasure – and above all else, a flutter of joyful spirits which made her feel she had strayed somehow into a most unfamiliar world.
In books too, as well as in music, she courted the misery which a contrast between the past and present was certain of giving.
The indirect boast; for you are really proud of your defects in writing, because you consider them as proceeding from a rapidity of thought and carelessness of execution, which, if not estimable, you think at least highly interesting. The power of doing anything with quickness is always prized much by the possessor, and often without any attention to the imperfection of the performance.
By not one of the circle was he listened to with such unbroken, unalloyed enjoyment as by his wife, who was really extremely happy to see him, and whose feelings were so warmed by his sudden arrival as to place her nearer agitation than she had been for the last twenty years. She had been almost fluttered for a few minutes, and still remained so sensibly animated as to put away her work, move Pug from her side, and give all her attention and all the rest of her sofa to her husband.
My being charming, Harriet, is not quite enough to induce me to marry; I must find other people charming – one.
I declare, there is no enjoyment like reading.
Pride is a very common failing, I believe. By all that I have ever read, I am convinced that it is very common indeed; that human nature is particularly prone to it, and that there are very few of us who do not cherish a feeling of self-complacency on the score of some quality or other, real or imaginary.
A woman must have a thorough knowledge of music, singing, drawing, dancing, and the modern languages, to deserve the word; and besides all this, she must possess a certain something in her air and manner of walking, the tone of her voice, her address and expressions, or the word will be but half-deserved.” “All.
Men of sense do not want silly wives.
The notions of a young man of one or two and twenty,” said he, “as to what is necessary in manners to make him quite the thing, are more absurd, I believe, than those of any other set of beings in the world. The folly of the means they often employ is only to be equalled by the folly of what they have in view.
To Elizabeth it appeared that, had her family made an agreement to expose themselves as much as they could during the evening, it would have been impossible for them to play their parts with more spirit or finer success.