You have a genius for bringing trouble upon yourself

Depend upon it, you are just the sort of girl a man would be glad to have for his sister! You don't even know how to swoon, and I daresay if you tried you would make wretched work of it, for all you have is common sense, and of what use is that, pray?

You’ve no more for me than I have for you.” Considerably disconcerted by this direct attack, she stammered: “How can you say so? When I am sure I have always been most sincerely attached to you!” “You deceive yourself, sister: not to me, but to my purse!

Remind me one day to teach you how to achieve a sneer, Hugh. Yours is too pronounced, and thus but a grimace. It should be but a faint curl of the lips.

Did you imagine that you would make me believe ill of Sophy with your foolish and spiteful letter!' he demanded. 'You have tried to set me against her from the outset, but you over-reached yourself today, my girl! How dared you write in such terms to me! How could you have been so crassly stupid as to suppose that Sophy could ever need your countenance to set her right in the eyes of the world, or that I would believe one word of slander against her?

The more enchanted the idyll, greater must be the pain of its ending.

I think myself I ought to be shot for writing such nonsense.... But it's unquestionably good escapist literature and I think I should rather like it if I were sitting in an air-raid shelter or recovering from flu.