A persuadable temper might sometimes be as much in favour of happiness as a very resolute character.

To be claimed as a good, though in an improper style, is at least better than being rejected as no good at all.

Wisdom is better than wit, and in the long run will certainly have the laugh on her side.

I have often observed that resignation is never so perfect as when the blessing denied begins to lose somewhat of its value in our eyes.

There are people, who the more you do for them, the less they will do for themselves.

It is indolence... Indolence and love of ease; a want of all laudable ambition, of taste for good company, or of inclination to take the trouble of being agreeable, which make men clergymen. A clergyman has nothing to do but be slovenly and selfish; read the newspaper, watch the weather, and quarrel with his wife. His curate does all the work and the business of his own life is to dine.

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife. However little known the feelings or views of such a man may be on his first entering a neighbourhood, this truth is so well fixed in the minds of the surrounding families, that he is considered as the rightful property of someone or other of their daughters.