To sit in the shade on a fine day and look upon verdure is the most perfect refreshment.
The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid.
Nobody minds having what is too good for them.
A man would always wish to give a woman a better home than the one he takes her from; and he who can do it, where there is no doubt of her regard, must, I think, be the happiest of mortals.
Human nature is so well disposed towards those who are in interesting situations, that a young person, who either marries or dies, is sure of being kindly spoken of.
Husbands and wives generally understand when opposition will be vain.
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.
It is always incomprehensible to a man that a woman should ever refuse an offer of marriage.
Nobody, who has not been in the interior of a family, can say what the difficulties of any individual of that family may be.
One cannot be always laughing at a man without now and then stumbling on something witty.
There is not one in a hundred of either sex who is not taken in when they marry.
I would have everybody marry if they can do it properly: I do not like to have people throw themselves away; but everybody should marry as soon as they can do it to advantage.
If things are going untowardly one month, they are sure to mend the next.
Vanity working on a weak head, produces every sort of mischief.
I could not sit down to write a serious romance under any other motive than to save my life.
Every man is surrounded by a neighborhood of voluntary spies.
For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbors and laugh at them in our turn?
One half of the world cannot understand the pleasures of the other.
Men have had every advantage of us in telling their own story. Education has been theirs in so much higher a degree; the pen has been in their hands. I will not allow books to prove anything.
They are much to be pitied who have not been given a taste for nature early in life.
