Surprises are foolish things. The pleasure is not enhanced, and the inconvenience is often considerable.

The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid.

Vanity and pride are different things, though the words are often used synonymously. A person may be proud without being vain. Pride relates more to our opinion of ourselves; vanity, to what we would have others think of us.

Friendship is certainly the finest balm for the pangs of disappointed love.

We do not look in our great cities for our best morality.

I am afraid that the pleasantness of an employment does not always evince its propriety.

There is no charm equal to tenderness of heart.

A person who can write a long letter with ease, cannot write ill.

Where youth and diffidence are united, it requires uncommon steadiness of reason to resist the attraction of being called the most charming girl in the world.

Happiness in marriage is entirely a matter of chance.

From politics, it was an easy step to silence.

Give a girl an education and introduce her properly into the world, and ten to one but she has the means of settling well, without further expense to anybody.

A woman, especially, if she have the misfortune of knowing anything, should conceal it as well as she can.

Oh! do not attack me with your watch. A watch is always too fast or too slow. I cannot be dictated to by a watch.

Vanity working on a weak head, produces every sort of mischief.

It sometimes happens that a woman is handsomer at twenty-nine than she was ten years before.

What is right to be done cannot be done too soon.

I do not want people to be very agreeable, as it saves me the trouble of liking them a great deal.

Seldom, very seldom, does complete truth belong to any human disclosure; seldom can it happen that something is not a little disguised, or a little mistaken.

Nothing is more deceitful than the appearance of humility. It is often only carelessness of opinion, and sometimes an indirect boast.

Woman is fine for her own satisfaction alone. No man will admire her the more, no woman will like her the better for it. Neatness and fashion are enough for the former, and a something of shabbiness or impropriety will be most endearing to the latter.

I have been a selfish being all my life, in practice, though not in principle.

To sit in the shade on a fine day and look upon verdure is the most perfect refreshment.

Every man is surrounded by a neighborhood of voluntary spies.

If I loved you less, I might be able to talk about it more.

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.

One man's style must not be the rule of another's.

My idea of good company is the company of clever, well-informed people who have a great deal of conversation; that is what I call good company.

One cannot be always laughing at a man without now and then stumbling on something witty.

Good-humoured, unaffected girls, will not do for a man who has been used to sensible women. They are two distinct orders of being.

No man is offended by another man's admiration of the woman he loves; it is the woman only who can make it a torment.

To look almost pretty is an acquisition of higher delight to a girl who has been looking plain for the first fifteen years of her life than a beauty from her cradle can ever receive.

I cannot speak well enough to be unintelligible.

Life seems but a quick succession of busy nothings.

Next to being married, a girl likes to be crossed in love a little now and then.

The more I know of the world, the more I am convinced that I shall never see a man whom I can really love.

Respect for right conduct is felt by every body.

A lady's imagination is very rapid; it jumps from admiration to love, from love to matrimony in a moment.

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.

Nobody minds having what is too good for them.

Dress is at all times a frivolous distinction, and excessive solicitude about it often destroys its own aim.

An artist cannot do anything slovenly.

Those who do not complain are never pitied.

Husbands and wives generally understand when opposition will be vain.

It is happy for you that you possess the talent of flattering with delicacy. May I ask whether these pleasing attentions proceed from the impulse of the moment, or are they the result of previous study?

It is always incomprehensible to a man that a woman should ever refuse an offer of marriage.

Let other pens dwell on guilt and misery.

To be fond of dancing was a certain step towards falling in love.

What wild imaginations one forms where dear self is concerned! How sure to be mistaken!