There is a stubbornness about me that never can bear to be frightened at the will of others. My courage always rises at every attempt to intimidate me.
I could not be happy with a man whose taste did not in every point coincide with my own. He must enter in all my feelings; the same books, the same music must charm us both.
I do not think I ever opened a book in my life which had not something to say upon woman's inconstancy. Songs and proverbs, all talk of woman's fickleness. But perhaps you will say, these were all written by men.
You have no ambition, I well know. Your wishes are all moderate.' 'As moderate as those of the rest of the world, I believe. I wish as well as every body else to be perfectly happy, but like every body else it must be in my own way. Greatness will not make me so.
Dearest, loveliest Elizabeth! What do I not owe you! You taught me a lesson, hard indeed at first, but most advantageous. By you, I was properly humbled.
There will be little rubs and disappointments everywhere, and we are all apt to expect too much; but then, if one scheme of happiness fails, human nature turns to another; if the first calculation is wrong, we make a second better: we find comfort somewhere.
But when a young lady is to be a heroine, the perverseness of forty surrounding families cannot prevent her. Something must and will happen to throw a hero in her way.
Pity is for this life, pity is the worm inside the meat, pity is the meat, pity is the shaking pencil, pity is the shaking voice-- not enough money, not enough love--pity for all of us--it is our grace, walking down the ramp or on the moving sidewalk, sitting in a chair, reading the paper, pity, turning a leaf to the light, arranging a thorn.