Francesca Carrara

"[From Marie, Comtesse de Soissons]: We love to talk of ourselves, but we are obliged to manœuvre for listeners. … …"

"The truth is, we like to talk over our disasters, because they are ours ; and others like to listen, because they are not theirs."

"Child of the Earth's old age, America is the favourite on whom a double portion has been lavished. The glorious sky, the fertile soil, the mine rich beneath, and, more than all, a brave, free, and intelligent race, who but must feel that the world's great destinies are yet unaccomplished, when the mind dwells on the glorious promise which kindles the far shores of the broad Atlantic ? The most creative imagination avails not to picture the noon of that mighty hemisphere now in its infancy."

"Considering what a useful thing deception is — the first and last lesson taught by what is called knowledge of the world — it is woful to observe how much of it is wasted. In nine cases out of ten, the most ingenious invention not only does not answer, but even defeats its own purpose. How much attention is thrown away, how often is flattery mistaken, and how many of our devices, like ostriches, blind their own eyes, and fancy others are blinded too !"

"… self-possession is the most provoking thing in the world."

"But there is a love that is stronger than death, and deeper than life ; for whose sake the sacrifice is light — ay, even unfelt. It is a love which, born of the pure and fresh feelings of youth, grows with your growth and strengthens with your strength — a love which would give sweetness to a palace and glory to a cottage — a love prepared to suffer, to endure, and yet suffice unto its own happiness — tried by time, by doubt, even by despair, and yet living on — the heart's deepest hope, and life's dearest tie."

"Terror dwells amid the works of man, not amid the works of nature. We tremble beside the tomb — we shrink from the icy vapour of the charnel-house — the foot walks unsteadily over the stones placed above the dead ; but the green grass and dewy flowers create no fear."

"There is something in the shadowless sky and the unbroken moonshine which mocks us with repose. We have no part in it ; our own unrest has no sympathy with the blue and spiritual horizon, whose hope is not with this life. The calm and quiet light is not of our busy and careful world; it belongs to sleep, to silence, and to dreams ; and, alas we gaze on it with the beating heart and the fevered pulse, while the thousand vain delusions of past and future cast their various shadows before our eyes. Who stands watching in the sleepless midnight, but one from whose pillow repose is banished by one all-present thought? Ambition, hate, love, alike have their vigils; and what have they in common with the cloudless sky, where the moon wanders, placid as the spirit of the good when resigned to die, and confident and filled with another and holier sphere ?"

"Besides, there is a strong current of romance in every feminine nature, that delights in the hazardous and the mysterious, especially in love affairs."

"Between the future and the soul there is some mysterious sympathy — imperfect and broken in our present state of existence."

"How unutterably do the wretched feel the least expression of kindness !"

"It is a curious fact, but a fact it is, that your witty people are the most hard-hearted in the world. The truth is, fancy destroys feeling. The quick eye to the ridiculous turns every thing to the absurd side ; and the neat sentence, the lively allusion, and the odd simile, invest what they touch with something of their own buoyant nature. Humour is of the heart, and has its tears ; but wit is of the head, and has only smiles — and the majority of those are bitter."

"How odd it is to think how differently people are employed at the same time, and how sad to think how heavily the burden falls on most ! The contrast of the lot of the few with that of the many rather aggravates the misery : — why should they be thus favoured ?"

"[From King Charles (II)]: Let a miracle have happened only once, and we always expect it to happen again, in our own case. Fidelity is very good as a precedent, — one true lover helps on the vows of a thousand false ones."

"No torture, though the human race are most ingenious in their devices of hate, can equal the low fever, the wearing depression of suspense."

"Strange mystery of our nature, that those in whom genius developes itself in imagination, thus taking its most ethereal form, should yet be the most dependent on the opinions of others !"

"[Guido] 'I do believe there is no existence so content as that whose present is engrossed by employment, and whose future is filled by some strong hope, the truth of which is never proved.'"

"Toil is the portion of day, as sleep is that of night; but if there be one hour of the twenty-four which has the life of day without its labour, and the rest of night without its slumber, it is the lovely and languid hour of twilight."