I . . . am always half afraid of finding a clever novel too clever--& of finding my own story & my own people all forestalled.

The evening ended with dancing. On its being proposed, Anne offered her services, as usual, and though her eyes would sometimes fill with tears as she sat at the instrument, she was extremely glad to be employed, and desired nothing in return but to be unobserved.

Everybody's heart is open, you know, when they have recently escaped from severe pain, or are recovering the blessing of health.

To wish was to hope, and to hope was to expect

“I often think,” said she, “that there is nothing so bad as parting with one's friends. One seems so forlorn without them.”

To be so bent on Marriage - to pursue a man merely for the sake of situation - is a sort of thing that shocks me; I cannot understand it. Poverty is a great Evil, but to a woman of Education and feeling it ought not, it cannot be the greatest. I would rather be a teacher at a school (and I can think of nothing worse) than marry a man I did not like.

Oh, Lizzy! do anything rather than marry without affection.