Do you know, I think that of all your idiosyncrasies that choke you give, when you are determined not to laugh, is the one that most enchants me.

As for the fan, she agreed that it was a most amusing trifle: just what she would wish to buy for herself, if it had not been so excessively ugly!

My dear girl, don't talk nonsense to me! You're lazy, that's all that's wrong with you. Why don't you take up social work?

I liked that young man, did not you? There was something particularly pleasing about his manners, which I thought very easy and frank. He has an air of honest manliness, too, which, in these days of fribbles and counter-coxcombs, I own I find refreshing!

There is a worse tyranny than that of ill-treatment. It is the tyranny of tears, vapours, appeals to feelings of affection and of gratitude!

I was under the impression that I warned you that in London country ways will not do, Frederica!” “You did!” she retorted. “And although I can’t say that I paid much heed to your advice it so happens that I am accompanied today by my aunt!” “Who adds invisibility to her other accomplishments!

But it is only in epic tragedies that gloom is unrelieved. In real life tragedy and comedy are so intermingled that when one is most wretched ridiculous things happen to make one laugh in spite of oneself.