The post-office is a wonderful establishment! The regularity and dispatch of it! If one thinks of all that it has to do, and all that it does so well, it is really astonishing!

Walter Scott has no business to write novels, especially good ones. He has fame and profit enough as a poet, and should not be taking the bread out of other people's mouths.

It's been many years since I had such an exemplary vegetable.

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.

But to live in ignorance on such a point was impossible.

You have no ambition, I well know. Your wishes are all moderate.' 'As moderate as those of the rest of the world, I believe. I wish as well as every body else to be perfectly happy, but like every body else it must be in my own way. Greatness will not make me so.

There seemed a gulf impassable between them.