The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid.

It is always incomprehensible to a man that a woman should ever refuse an offer of marriage.

When I look out on such a night as this, I feel as if there could be neither wickedness nor sorrow in the world; and there certainly would be less of both if the sublimity of Nature were more attended to, and people were carried more out of themselves by contemplating such a scene.

Upon the whole, therefore, she found what had been sometimes found before, that an event to which she had looked forward with impatient desire, did not, in taking place, bring all the satisfaction she had promised herself.

She was stronger alone; and her own good sense so well supported her, that her firmness was as unshaken, her appearance of cheerfulness as invariable, as, with regrets so poignant and so fresh, it was possible for them to be.

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

Where shall we see a better daughter, or a kinder sister, or a truer friend?