Vanity, not love, has been my folly.

Children of the same family, the same blood, with the same first associations and habits, have some means of enjoyment in their power, which no subsequent connections can supply.

You think me foolish to call instruction a torment, but if you had been as much used as myself to hear poor little children first learning their letters and then learning to spell, if you had ever seen how stupid they can be for a whole morning together, and how tired my poor mother is at the end of it, as I am in the habit of seeing almost every day of my life at home, you would allow that to torment and to instruct might sometimes be used as synonymous words.

Where a man does his best with only moderate powers, he will have the advantage over negligent superiority.

She knew that when she played she was giving pleasure only to herself; but this was no new sensation

Why not seize the pleasure at once? -- How often is happiness destroyed by preparation, foolish preparation!

Faultless in spite of all her faults.