And I, Mr. Knightley, am equally stout in my confidence of its not doing them any harm. With all dear Emma's little faults, she is an excellent creature. Where shall we see a better daughter, or a kinder sister, or a truer friend? No, no; she has qualities which may be trusted; she will never lead any one really wrong; she will make no lasting blunder; where Emma errs once, she is in the right a hundred times.
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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.
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The system -- the American one, at least -- is a vast and noble experiment. It has been polestar and exemplar for other nations. But from kindergarten until she graduates from college the girl is treated in it exactly like her brothers. She studies the same subjects, becomes proficient at the same sports. Oh, it is a magnificent lore she learns, education for the mind beyond anything Jane Austen or Saint Theresa or even Mrs. Pankhurst ever dreamed. It is truly Utopian. But Utopia was never meant to exist on this disheveled planet.
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A large income is the best recipe for happiness I ever heard of.
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To look almost pretty, is an acquisition of higher delight to a girl who has been looking plain the first fifteen years of her life, than a be...
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Everybody likes to go their own way--to choose their own time and manner of devotion.
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It may be possible to do without dancing entirely. Instances have been known of young people passing many, many months successively without being at any ball of any description, and no material injury accrue either to body or mind; but when a beginning is made -- when the felicities of rapid motion have once been, though slightly, felt -- it must be a very heavy set that does not ask for more.
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Without thinking highly either of men or of matrimony, marriage had always been her object; it was the only honourable provision for well-educ...
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It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a large fortune must be in want of a wife.
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Mrs. Hall, of Sherborne, was brought to bed yesterday of a dead child, some weeks before she was expected, owing to a...
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A woman should never be trusted with money.
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A basin of nice smooth gruel, thin, but not too thin.
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To sit in the shade on a fine day, and look upon verdure is the most perfect refreshment.
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What dreadful hot weather we have! It keeps me in a continual state of inelegance.
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It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife. However little known the feelings or views of such a man on his first entering a neighbourhood, this truth is so well fixed in the minds of ths surrounding families, that he is considered as the rightful property of some one or other of their daughters.
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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.
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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.
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For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbors and laugh at them in our turn?
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An artist cannot do anything slovenly.
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We do not look in our great cities for our best morality.
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For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbours, and laugh at them in our turn?
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At my time of life opinions are tolerably fixed. It is not likely that I should now see or hear anything to change them.
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It is always incomprehensible to a man that a woman should ever refuse an offer of marriage.
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One cannot be always laughing at a man without now and then stumbling on something witty.
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One half of the world cannot understand the pleasures of the other.
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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.
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On his two younger sisters he then bestowed an equal portion of his fraternal tenderness, for he asked each of them how they did, and observed that they both looked very ugly.
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Those who do not complain are never pitied.
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You must learn some of my philosophy. Think only of the past as its remembrance gives you pleasure.
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In every power, of which taste is the foundation, excellence is pretty fairly divided between the sexes.
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