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

He certainly is very agreeable, and I give you leave to like him. You have liked many a stupider person.

Self-knowledge is the first step to maturity.

I consider a country-dance as an emblem of marriage. Fidelity and complaisance are the principle duties of both; and those men who do not choose to dance or to marry them selves, have no business with the partners or wives of the neighbors.

Such a letter was not to be soon recovered from. . . . Every moment rather brought fresh agitation. It was an overpowering happiness.

I could not sit seriously down to write a serious Romance under any other motive than to save my life, & if it were indispensable for me to keep it up & never relax into laughing at myself or other people, I am sure I should be hung before I had finished the first chapter. No - I must keep my own style & go on in my own way; and though I may never succeed again in that, I am convinced that I should totally fail in any other.

A lady, without a family, was the very best preserver of furniture in the world.