"Believing, as I do, that falling in love goes by destiny, and that, of all affairs, those of the heart are those for which there is the least accounting, I have always thought, that to give reasons for its happening, is throwing the said reasons away — a waste much to be deprecated in an age where reasons are in such great request. It is not beauty that inspires love — still less is it mind. It is not situation — people who were indifferent in a moonlight walk, have taken a fit of sentiment in Piccadilly. It is not early association — indeed, the chances are rather against the Paul and Virginia style. It is not dress —conquests have been made in curl-papers. In short — to be mythological in my conclusion — the quiver of Cupid hangs at the girdle of Fate together with her spindle and scissors."

"… whatever people in general do not understand, they are always prepared to dislike ; the incomprehensible is always the obnoxious."

"In partings those who go know not half the suffering of those who stay. In the one case, occupation strengthens, and novelty engages the mind."

"Perhaps, from an innate desire of justification, sorrow always exaggerates itself. Memory is quite one of Job's friends; and the past is ever ready to throw its added darkness on the present."

"… imagination is as useful in keeping affection alive as the eastern monarch's fairy ring was in keeping alive his conscience."

"But Life's great circumstances turn on its small ones. Could we see into the causes of all important events, we should often find that some small and insignificant trifle has been, as it were, their fate."

"Books, works of art, the noble statue, the glorious picture, how rarely are any of these the subjects of conversation ? Few venture to speak on any topic that really interests them, for fear they should be led away by the warmth of speaking, and, by saying more than they intended, lay themselves open to the sarcasm which lies, like an Indian in ambush, ready to spring forth the moment the victim is off his guard. Take one instance among many. Beyond the general coarse and false compliment which it is held necessary to address with a popular author, and which is repaid by an affected and absurd indifference, what vein of conversation is afterwards started ? Assuredly something which interests neither : the mind of the one receives no impression — that of the other puts forth no powers. The natural face may be a thousand times more attractive, still a mask must be worn. No one has courage to be himself. We look upon others, and our eyes reflect back their images. It is the same with the mind. Even thus in society do we mirror the likeness of others. All originality being destroyed, our natural craving for variety asks some stimulant, and we are obliged to relieve the insipidity by bitters and acids. Who would dare to be eloquent in the face of a sneer ? or who express a sentiment which would instantly be turned to shame and laughter ? Ridicule is the dry-rot of society."

"[From Lady Mandeville]: … we over-educate the memory, while the temper and the feelings are neglected, forgetting that the future will be governed much more by the affections than by the understanding."

"O for some German philosopher, with the perseverance of the African travellers, who seem to make a point of conscience to die on their travels, not, though, till the said travels are properly interred in quartos — with their perseverance, and the imagination of a poet to examine into the doctrine of sympathies ! And to begin with letters, in what consists the mysterious attraction no one will deny they possess ? Why, when we neither expect, hope, nor even wish for one, and yet when they are brought, who does not feel disappointed to find there are none for them? and why, when opening the epistle would set the question at rest, do we persevere in looking at the direction, the seal, the shape, as if from them alone we could guess the contents? What a love of mystery and of vague expectance there is in the human heart !"

"How irksome, how wearying, to be doomed always to the society of those who are like people speaking different languages! It resembles travelling through the East, with a few phrases of lingua franca — just enough for the ordinary purposes of life — enow of words to communicate a want, but not to communicate a thought !"

"Ah ! money is the true Aladdin's lamp ; and I have often thought the Bank of England is the mysterious roc's egg, whose movements are forbidden to mortal eye."

"… indifference is but another of the illusions of youth : …"

"General assertions, like general truths, are not always applicable to individual cases [; and]"

"Nothing circulates so rapidly as a secret."

"[; and] though Fortune's wheel is generally on the turn, sometimes when it gets into the mud, it sticks there."

"… the country owes much of its merit to being unknown."

"Every girl has a natural fancy for enacting the heroine — and, generally speaking, a very harmless fancy it is, after all."

"Absence is a trial whose result is often fatal to love ; but there are two sorts of absence. I would not advise a lover to stake his fortune or his feelings on the faith of the mistress whose absence is one of flattery, amusement, and that variety of objects so destructive to the predominance of one — at least not to trust an incipient attachment to such an ordeal ; but he may safely trust absence which is passed in loneliness, where the heart, thrown upon itself, finds its resource in that most imaginative faculty — memory."

"If there be two things in the world — to use a common domestic expression — enough to provoke a saint, it is, first to have your husband not enter into your feelings — (your feelings sound so much better than your temper) — and, in the second place, laughing at them."

"— obstinacy is the heroism of little minds —"

"Thoughts rarely wander without an object ; and that object once found, they fix there with all the intensity which any thing of sentiment acquires in solitude or idleness."

"Surprise is the only power that works miracles now-a-days ; …"

"Spring and Morning are ladies that owe half their charms to their portrait-painters."

"It is very pleasant to follow one's inclinations ; but, unfortunately, we cannot follow them all. They are like the teeth sown by Cadmus ; they spring up, get in each other's way, and fight."

"Change of opinion is like waltzing — very much the fashion, and very proper ; but the English have so many ridiculous prejudices, that they really do both as if they were doing something very wrong."

"Well, an obstinate temper is very disagreeable, particularly in a wife ; a passionate one very shocking in a child ; but, for one's own particular comfort, Heaven help the possessor of an irresolute one ! Its day of hesitation — its night of repentance — the mischief it does — the miseries it feels ! — its proprietor may well exclaim, "Nobody can tell what I suffer but myself!”"

"No illusions are so perfect as those of love — none, therefore, so pleasant."

"Or — to descend to the ordinary ranks and routine of life — we furnish a house, that our friends may cry out on our extravagance or bad taste; — we give dinners, that our guests may hereafter find fault with our cook or our cellar ; — we give parties, that three parts of the company may rail at their stupidity; — we dress, that our acquaintance may revenge themselves on our silks, by finding fault with our appearance ;— we marry ; if well, it was interest — if badly, it was insanity ; — we die, and even that is our own fault ; if we had but done so and so, or gone to Dr. such a one, the accident would not have happened."

"And also, like most indolent people, he easily yielded to any impression : his character may be summed up by saying, he would have made an exquisite woman."

"It is a wretched thing to pass one's life among those utterly incapable of appreciating us ; upon whom our sense or our sentiment, our wit or our affection, are equally thrown away : people who make some unreal and distorted picture of us — say it is our likeness, and act accordingly."

"Your weak animals are almost always cunning ;"

"[From Mr Morland]: … our present mode of education has too much of the forcing system in it. The forward child grows into the dogmatic youth, and it takes ten years of disappointment and mortification to undo the work of twenty. Nothing leads to such a false idea of self-importance as display. I dislike those railroads to information, because the labour of acquiring knowledge is even more valuable than the knowledge acquired. It is a great misfortune to children to be made of too much consequence."

"The politician — oh, Job ! the devil should have made you prime minister — set the Tories to impeach your religion, the Whigs your patriotism — placed a couple of Sunday newspapers before you — he certainly would have succeeded in making you curse and swear too ; and then posterity — it will just be a mooted point for future historians, whether you were the saviour, the betrayer, or the tyrant of your country, those being the three choice epitaphs kept for the especial use of patriots in power."

"A gallop always puts people in a good humour ; …"

"Deep as may be the regret, though the lost be the dearest, nay, the only tie that binds to earth, never did the most passionate grief give way to its emotion in the presence of the dead. Awe is stronger than sorrow : there is a calm, which, though we do not share, we dare not disturb : the chill of the grave is around them and us."

"The surprise was something of a shock ; but people may be frightened into their wits as well as out of them ; and the necessity for exertion usually brings with it the power —"

"Amid the many signs of that immortality of which our nature is so conscious, none has the certainty, the conviction, of affection : we feel that love, which is stronger and better than life, was made to outlast it. In the memory that survives the lost and the dear, we have mute evidence of a power over the grave :"

"The narrative of the young carries its hearer along by its own buoyancy — by the gladness which is contagious ; …"

"There is wisdom in even the exaggeration of grief — there is little cause to fear we should feel too much."

"— Lady Lauriston was a woman with whom it would be as wearisome to talk as it would be to perambulate long a straight gravel walk and neatly arranged flowers ; …"

"The self-reproach of a sensitive and affectionate temper is of the most refined and exaggerating nature. Unmixed grief requires and seeks solitude — its unbroken indulgence is its enjoyment ; but that which is mingled with remorse, involuntarily shrinks from it self, — it wants consolation — it desires to hear some other voice extenuate its faults, — and even while disowning and denying the offered excuse, it is comforted."

"Nothing is so ingenious in its thousand ways and means as affection."

"Enough of murder, and mystery, which always seems to double the crime it hides, …"

"Affection exaggerates its own offences."

"How youth makes its wishes hopes, and its hopes certainties !"