I never wish to offend, but I am so foolishly shy, that I often seem negligent, when I am only kept back by my natural awkwardness ... Shyness is only the effect of a sense of inferiority in some way or other. If I could persuade myself that my manners were perfectly easy and graceful, I should not be shy.
Epitaphs are cheap, and they do a poor chap a world of good after he is dead, especially if he had hard luck while he was alive. I wish they were used more.
All through it, I have known myself to be quite undeserving. And yet I have had the weakness, and have still the weakness, to wish you to know with what a sudden mastery you kindled me, heap of ashes that I am, into fire- a fire, however, inseparable in its nature from myself, quickening nothing, lighting nothing, doing no service, idly burning away.
For legislators make the citizens good by forming habits in them, and this is the wish of every legislator, and those who do not effect it miss their mark, and it is in this that a good constitution differs from a bad one.
She knew that what Marianne and her mother conjectured one moment, they believed the next: that with them, to wish was to hope, and to hope was to expect.
A pessimist asked God for relief. Ah, you wish me to restore your hope and cheerfulness, said God. No, replied the petitioner, I wish you to create something that would justify them. The world is all created,said God, but you have overlooked something
I wish I hadn't cried so much!” said Alice, as she swam about, trying to find her way out. I shall be punished for it now, I suppose, by being drowned in my own tears !