"They are much to be pitied who have not been given a taste for nature early in life."

"Happiness in marriage is entirely a matter of chance."

"Seldom, very seldom, does complete truth belong to any human disclosure; seldom can it happen that something is not a little disguised, or a little mistaken."

"Where youth and diffidence are united, it requires uncommon steadiness of reason to resist the attraction of being called the most charming girl in the world."

"Let other pens dwell on guilt and misery."

"Next to being married, a girl likes to be crossed in love a little now and then."

"There is no charm equal to tenderness of heart."

"If I loved you less, I might be able to talk about it more."

"There are people, who the more you do for them, the less they will do for themselves."

"An engaged woman is always more agreeable than a disengaged. She is satisfied with herself. Her cares are over, and she feels that she may exert all her powers of pleasing without suspicion. All is safe with a lady engaged; no harm can be done."

"It is happy for you that you possess the talent of flattering with delicacy. May I ask whether these pleasing attentions proceed from the impulse of the moment, or are they the result of previous study?"

"Give a girl an education and introduce her properly into the world, and ten to one but she has the means of settling well, without further expense to anybody."

"To sit in the shade on a fine day and look upon verdure is the most perfect refreshment."

"My idea of good company is the company of clever, well-informed people who have a great deal of conversation; that is what I call good company."

"A mind lively and at ease, can do with seeing nothing, and can see nothing that does not answer."

"One does not love a place the less for having suffered in it, unless it has been all suffering, nothing but suffering."

"One man's ways may be as good as another's, but we all like our own best."

"The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid."

"There are certainly not so many men of large fortune in the world, as there are pretty women to deserve them."

"There is something so amiable in the prejudices of a young mind, that one is sorry to see them give way to the reception of more general opinions."

"No man is offended by another man's admiration of the woman he loves; it is the woman only who can make it a torment."

"I do not want people to be very agreeable, as it saves me the trouble of liking them a great deal."

"A woman, especially, if she have the misfortune of knowing anything, should conceal it as well as she can."

"Single women have a dreadful propensity for being poor. Which is one very strong argument in favor of matrimony."

"It is always incomprehensible to a man that a woman should ever refuse an offer of marriage."

"It sometimes happens that a woman is handsomer at twenty-nine than she was ten years before."

"Business, you know, may bring you money, but friendship hardly ever does."

"There is nothing like staying at home for real comfort."

"Respect for right conduct is felt by every body."

"A large income is the best recipe for happiness I ever heard of."

"I have been a selfish being all my life, in practice, though not in principle."

"General benevolence, but not general friendship, made a man what he ought to be."

"Surprises are foolish things. The pleasure is not enhanced, and the inconvenience is often considerable."

"The more I know of the world, the more I am convinced that I shall never see a man whom I can really love."

"One man's style must not be the rule of another's."

"Selfishness must always be forgiven you know, because there is no hope of a cure."

"One cannot be always laughing at a man without now and then stumbling on something witty."

"A lady's imagination is very rapid; it jumps from admiration to love, from love to matrimony in a moment."

"It will, I believe, be everywhere found, that as the clergy are, or are not what they ought to be, so are the rest of the nation."

"Dress is at all times a frivolous distinction, and excessive solicitude about it often destroys its own aim."

"What wild imaginations one forms where dear self is concerned! How sure to be mistaken!"

"Husbands and wives generally understand when opposition will be vain."

"From politics, it was an easy step to silence."

"Woman is fine for her own satisfaction alone. No man will admire her the more, no woman will like her the better for it. Neatness and fashion are enough for the former, and a something of shabbiness or impropriety will be most endearing to the latter."

"Vanity working on a weak head, produces every sort of mischief."

"To look almost pretty is an acquisition of higher delight to a girl who has been looking plain for the first fifteen years of her life than a beauty from her cradle can ever receive."

"An artist cannot do anything slovenly."

"Friendship is certainly the finest balm for the pangs of disappointed love."

"For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbors and laugh at them in our turn?"

"Life seems but a quick succession of busy nothings."