Lady Anne Granard (or Keeping up Appearances)

"No one dies but some one is glad of it."

"Joy and sorrow are the inseparable companions of death."

"The good and the generous action of which we feel incapable is a reproach when done by another."

"Our own faults are those we are the first to detect, and the last to forgive, in others."

"Nothing more indicates those tastes and habits which go so far towards both making and showing the character — as a person's sitting-room."

"When we trace to their source the most important circumstances of our life, in what trifles have they originated! — a look, a word, are the ministers of fate."

"There is a mania in every class to be mistaken for what it is not. Many things innocent, nay, even graceful in themselves, become injurious and awkward by unseasonable imitation. We follow, we copy; first comfort goes, and then respectability. A false seeming is mistaken for refinement, and half life is thrown away in worthless sacrifices to a set of hollow idols called appearances."

"It is a notable fact that we keep ourselves most in the dark about ourselves."

"Once set a strong mind thinking, and you have done all that it needs for its education."

"Every one considers the world as made especially for their own purposes."

"Nothing deceives its possessor like vanity."

"Modern history might be told by a succession of dinners."

"The first love-letter is an epoch in love's happy season — it makes assurance doubly sure — that which has hitherto, perhaps, only found utterance in sweet and hurried words, now seems to take a more tangible existence. A love-letter is a proof of how dearly, even in absence, you are remembered."

"Every age has its characteristic, and our present one is not behind its predecessors in that respect; it is the age of systems, every system enforced by a treatise."

"Conjugal government requires its treatises. A young woman setting out in life lacks a printed guide. Her cookery-book, however, may afford some useful hints till one be actually directed to the important subject just mentioned. Many well-known receipts are equally available for a batterie de cuisine or du cœur. Your roasted husband is subdued by the fire of fierce words and fiercer looks — your broiled husband, under the pepper and salt of taunt and innuendo — your stewed husband, under the constant application of petty vexations — your boiled husband dissolves under the watery influences — while your confectionized husband goes through a course of the blanc mange of flattery, or the preserves and sweets of caresses and smiles."

"Hope and experience take two different sides of an argument."

"Whether wealth bring the curse of selfishness along with it, or that the leaven was in our nature, only dormant till called forth by circumstances, we are only too apt to misuse it, even as others have done before us."

"Best intentions are not the best things in the world to marry upon."

"While bills are being brought into the House of Commons to regulate every thing, from the sweeps crying "sweep," to "emancipation, vote by ballot, and free trade," is there no county member whose "time and talents" are devoted to "domestic policy," who will bring in a bill "for the better regulation of the marriage ceremony," and put the canonical hours later in the day? at all events, could there not be a special clause in favour of London? A spring morning there is the very reverse of Thomson's description; for "delicious mildness" read "a cutting east wind;" and for "veiled in roses" substitute "smoke and fog." The streets are given up to the necessities of life — to the milkman with his cans, the butcher with his tray, the baker with his basket; all belong to the material portion of existence. Now, marriage is (or ought to be) an affair of affections, sentiments, &c. The legislature ought to give it the full benefit of moonlight and wax-candles."

"Nothing is too unreasonable nor too unkind for selfishness, acted upon by vanity."

"Those who have all their lives been accustomed to a cheerful and happy home, can scarcely understand the extent to which domestic tyranny is sometimes carried."

"Now there is nothing that puts people out of their way more than a change from their usual sitting-room ; it is almost as bad as moving to a new house."

"-- shopping ! one of the pleasant necessities in a young lady's case who is about to change her condition, filled up the morning."

"But Mr. Gooch liked bright colours; and, without going the length of kindling yellow, most gentlemen like them too. I think it is the mere preference of personal vanity, on the principle of contrast, their taste is dictated by self-consideration; a woman in sombre hues does not sufficiently throw out their own dark dress."

"... the horizon of matrimony is only seen through a glass, and that darkly, if the experience of others be the glass by which we make our observations."

"And no ring, if it does wither its circle, withers so utterly as a golden one. With only the false criterion of courtship to judge by, the wedded pair expect too much from each other ; and those who should make the most, make the least allowance. Tastes differ, tempers jar, trifles become important — as the grain of sand, which, nothing in itself, yet, gathered together, sweeps over the fertile plain, leaving no sign that there ever was blossom or fruit. The scar, which would soon pass, did distance or time intervene, can not heal from hourly irritation, One quarrel brings the memory of its predecessor, and grievances and mortifications are treasured up for perpetual reference. Too late, each finds out how utterly unsuited either is to the other ; they have not a feeling, a taste, or an opinion in common."

"The power of young Joy, like that of young Love, does not travel far on the dusty road of life in general."

"Alas! how seldom are any of us quite happy at the passing moment."

"It is a very difficult thing for the most cunning, when they say one thing and mean another, to hide their wishes from one as practised as themselves ; and an awkward thing to commit yourselves in writing at all where a secret or a scheme is concerned."

"The free pen, prone to pour out the suggestions of artless affection, vivid imagination, or domestic anecdote, is as much woman's especial instrument as the needle."

"... a disgust for political and fashionable society (which is, in fact, very generally to be found in those who are engaged in public offices, conscious that they do the work for which others are paid)"

"What a life for a free man, born to the use of dogs and horses, pure air, and wide-spreading moors! — no wonder that, although junior partner, and as modest as he was high-spirited, he trod his counting-house floor with a step vigorous and springy as the young captain of a man-of-war, for he felt that he was an emancipated slave; nay, more, a British merchant. If not "monarch of all he surveyed," he was certainly monarch of all he desired, which is probably more than any one of those mighty personages who rule mankind could have honestly asserted."

"No person of fashion ever laughs out from the impulse of the heart,"

"The possession of beauty leads to an overweening admiration of it, and wealth gives a power of preserving this boon of nature in a manner forbidden to the poor, which will account fully for the extreme and perhaps blameable solicitude a few continue to feel on the subject."

"... everybody was much more pleased than people are in general with any lions, who are also exotics, to whom they condescend to be attentive, but refuse to be friendly; rejoicing when any little conventional informality reduces the genius, whose patent of nobility the Creator himself has bestowed, below the level of fashion, and substituting ridicule for admiration, the smile of the scorner for the approval of veneration."

"... old bachelors are fond of young girls, under the idea that they can manage them the best"