Will you marry me, vile and abominable girl that you are? Yes, but, mind, it only to save my neck from being wrung!

How very awkward places we do choose in which to propose to one another!' remarked Mr. Beaumaris

[He was aware] of the value of the word of praise dropped at exactly the right moment; and he would have thought himself extremely stupid to withhold what cost him so little and was productive of such desirable results.

And don’t you say that it is very kind and obliging of him, sir, like Jessamy, because if you don’t like a person, you don’t wish to be obliged to him!

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!

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.

[...]if you talk any more flummery to me, Frederica, I shall give you one of my—er—icy set-downs!”(Alverstoke)