"It is natural for our unamiable sex to dislike the creatures, for you ladies lavish so many caresses upon them."

"You may think it all very fine, Mr. Huntingdon, to amuse yourself with rousing my jealousy; but take care you don't rouse my hate instead. And when you have once extinguished my love, you will find it no easy matter to kindle it again."

"I cannot love a man who cannot protect me."

"Preserve me from such cordiality! It is like handling briar - roses and may - blossoms - bright enough to the eye, and outwardly soft to the touch, but you know there are thorns beneath, and every now and then you feel them too; and perhaps resent the injury by crushing them in till you have destroyed their power, though somewhat to the detriment of your own fingers."

"I was infatuated once with a foolish, besotted affection, that clung to him in spite of his unworthiness, but it is fairly gone now - wholly crushed and withered away; and he has none but himself and his vices to thank for it."

"When a lady condescends to apologise, there is no keeping one's anger."

"I wished to tell the truth, for truth always conveys its own moral to those who are able to receive it."

"Smiles and tears are so alike with me, they are neither of them confined to any particular feelings: I often cry when I am happy, and smile when I am sad."

"I thought Mr. Millward never would cease telling us that he was no tea - drinker, and that it was highly injurious to keep loading the stomach with slops to the exclusion of more wholesome sustenance, and so give himself time to finish his fourth cup."

"My heart is too thoroughly dried to be broken in a hurry, and I mean to live as long as I can."

"But our wishes are like tinder: the flint and steel of circumstances are continually striking out sparks, which vanish immediately, unless they chance to fall upon the tinder of our wishes; then, they instantly ignite, and the flame of hope is kindled in a moment."

"I shall expect my husband to have no pleasures but what he shares with me; and if his greatest pleasure of all is not the enjoyment of my company - why - it will be the worse for him - that's all.'If such are your expectations of matrimony, Esther, you must, indeed, be careful whom you marry - or rather, you must avoid it altogether."

"No, but still it is very unpleasant to live with such unimpressible, incomprehensible creatures. You cannot love them; and if you could, your love would be utterly thrown away: they could neither return it, nor value, nor understand it."

"I'll promise to think twice before I take any important step you seriously disapprove of."

"Two years hence you will be as calm as I am now, - and far, far happier, I trust, for you are a man and free to act as you please"

"It was wrong to be so joyless, so desponding; I should have made God my friend, and to do His will the pleasure and the business of my life; but faith was weak, and passion was too strong."

"Then, you must fall each into your proper place. You'll do your business, and she, if she's worthy of you, will do hers; but it's your business to please yourself, and hers to please you."

"You have blighted the promise of youth, and made my life a wilderness!"

"There is always a "but" in this imperfect world."

"Adieu! but let me cherish, still, The hope with which I cannot part. Contempt may wound, and coldness chill, But still it lingers in my heart. And who can tell but Heaven, at last, May answer all my thousand prayers, And bid the future pay the past With joy for anguish, smiles for tears?"

"His heart was like a sensitive plant, that opens for a moment in the sunshine, but curls up and shrinks into itself at the slightest touch of the finger, or the lightest breath of wind."

"Well, to tell you the truth, I've thought of it often and often before, but he's such devilish good company is Huntingdon, after all - you can't imagine what a jovial good fellow he is when he's not fairly drunk, only just primed or half - seas - over - we all have a bit of a liking for him at the bottom of our hearts, though we can't respect him.'But should you wish yourself to be like him?'No, I'd rather be like myself, bad as I am."

"Oh, Youth may listen patiently, While sad Experience tells her tale, But Doubt sits smiling in his eye, For ardent Hope will still prevail!He hears how feeble Pleasure dies, By guilt destroyed, and pain and woe;He turns to Hope - and she replies, 'Believe it not - it is not so!"

"Therefore, have done with this nonsense: you have no ground for hope: dismiss, at once, these hurtful thoughts and foolish wishes from your mind, and turn to your own duty, and the dull blank life that lies before you. You might have known such happiness was not for you."

"He cannot endure Rachel, because he knows she has a proper appreciation of him."

"Well, but you affirm that virtue is only elicited by temptation; - and you think that a woman cannot be too little exposed to temptation, or too little acquainted with vice, or anything connected therewith ' It must be, either, that you think she is essentially so vicious, or so feeble - minded that she cannot withstand temptation, - and though she may be pure and innocent as long as she is kept in ignorance and restraint, yet, being destitute of real virtue, to teach her how to sin is at once to make her a sinner."

"I am sorry, Miss Grey, you should think it necessary to interfere with Master Bloomfield's amusements; he was very much distressed about you destroying the birds.'When Master Bloomfield's amusements consist in injuring sentient creatures, ' I answered, 'I think it my duty to interfere.'You seemed to have forgotten, ' said she, calmly, 'that the creatures were all created for our convenience.'I thought that doctrine admitted some doubt, but merely replied - 'If they were, we have no right to torment them for our amusement."

"She was trusted and valued by her father, loved and courted by all dogs, cats, children, and poor people, and slighted and neglected by everybody else."

"I have often wished in vain, ' said she, 'for another's judgment to appeal to when I could scarcely trust the direction of my own eye and head, they having been so long occupied with the contemplation of a single object as to become almost incapable of forming a proper idea respecting it.'That, ' replied I, 'is only one of many evils to which a solitary life exposes us."

"No one can be happy in eternal solitude."

"Severed and gone, so many years! And art thou still so dear to me, That throbbing heart and burning tears Can witness how I cling to thee?"

"What business had I to think of one that never thought of me?"

"It's well to have such a comfortable assurance regarding the worth of those we love. I only wish you may not find your confidence misplaced."

"If you would really study my pleasure, mother, you must consider your own comfort and convenience a little more than you do."

"But this gives no proper idea of my feelings at all; and no one that has not lived such a retired stationary life as mine, can possibly imagine what they were: hardly even if he has known what it is to awake some morning, and find himself in Port Nelson, in New Zealand, with a world of waters between himself and all that knew him."

"Never! while heaven spares my reason, ' replied I, snatching away the hand he had presumed to seize and press between his own."

"Already, I seemed to feel my intellect deteriorating, my heart petrifying, my soul contracting; and Itrembled lest my very moral perceptions should become deadened, my distinctions of right and wrong confounded, and all my better faculties be sunk, at last, beneath the baneful influence of such a mode of life. The gross vapors of earth were gathering around me, and closing in upon my inward heaven; and thus it was that Mr. Weston rose at length upon me, appearing like the morning star in my horizon, to save me from the fear of utter darkness; and I rejoiced that I now had a subject for contemplation that was above me, not beneath."

"How odd it is that we so often weep for each other's distresses, when we shed not a tear for our own!"

"There is perfect love in Heaven!"

"I possess the faculty of enjoying the company of those I - of my friends as well in silence as in conversation."

"But where hope rises, fear must lurk behind."

"To regret the exchange of earthly pleasures for the joys of Heaven, is as if the grovelling caterpillar should lament that it must one day quit the nibbled leaf to soar aloft and flutter through the air, roving at will from flower to flower, sipping sweet honey from their cups, or basking in their sunny petals. If these little creatures knew how great a change awaited them, no doubt they would regret it; but would not all such sorrow be misplaced?"

"Is it that they think it a duty to be continually talking, ' pursued she: 'and so never pause to think, but fill up with aimless trifles and vain repetitions when subjects of real interest fail to present themselves? - or do they really take a pleasure in such discourse?'Very likely they do, ' said I; 'their shallow minds can hold no great ideas, and their light heads are carried away by trivialities that would not move a better - furnished skull; - and their only alternative to such discourse is to plunge over head and ears into the slough of scandal - which is their chief delight."

"This rose is not so fragrant as a summer flower, but it has stood through hardships none of them could bear: the cold rain of winter has sufficed to nourish it, and its faint sun to warm it; the bleak winds have not blanched it, or broken its stem, and the keen frost has not blighted it. Look, Gilbert, it is still fresh and blooming as a flower can be, with the cold snow even now on its petals."

"The human heart is like india - rubber; a little swells it, but a great deal will not burst it. If 'little more than nothing will disturb it, little less than all things will suffice' to break it. As in the outer members of our frame, there is a vital power inherent in itself that strengthens it against external violence. Every blow that shakes it will serve to harden it against a future stroke; as constant labour thickens the skin of the hand, and strengthens its muscles instead of wasting them away: so that a day of arduous toil, that might excoriate a lady's palm, would make no sensible impression on that of a hardy ploughman."

"I see that a man cannot give himself up to drinking without being miserable one - half his days and mad the other."

"She left me, offended at my want of sympathy, and thinking, no doubt, that I envied her. I did not - at least, I firmly believed I did not."

"A light wind swept over the corn, and all nature laughed in the sunshine."

"God might awaken that heart, supine and stupefied with self - indulgence, and remove the film of sensual darkness from his eyes, but I could not."

"I am satisfied that if a book is a good one, it is so whatever the sex of the author may be. All novels are or should be written for both men and women to read, and I am at a loss to conceive how a man should permit himself to write anything that would be really disgraceful to a woman, or why a woman should be censured for writing anything that would be proper and becoming for a man."