A large income is the best recipe for happiness I ever heard of.
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.
The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid.
One half of the world cannot understand the pleasures of the other.
Surprises are foolish things. The pleasure is not enhanced, and the inconvenience is often considerable.
I do not want people to be very agreeable, as it saves me the trouble of liking them a great deal.
Friendship is certainly the finest balm for the pangs of disappointed love.
A woman, especially, if she have the misfortune of knowing anything, should conceal it as well as she can.
To sit in the shade on a fine day and look upon verdure is the most perfect refreshment.
A lady's imagination is very rapid; it jumps from admiration to love, from love to matrimony in a moment.
To be fond of dancing was a certain step towards falling in love.
It isn't what we say or think that defines us, but what we do.
Happiness in marriage is entirely a matter of chance.
Women are supposed to be very calm generally: but women feel just as men feel; they need exercise for their faculties, and a field for their efforts as much as their brothers do; they suffer from too rigid a restraint, too absolute a stagnation, precisely as men would suffer; and it is narrow-minded in their more privileged fellow-creatures to say that they ought to confine themselves to making puddings and knitting stockings, to playing on the piano and embroidering bags.
Vanity and pride are different things, though the words are often used synonymously. A person may be proud without being vain. Pride relates more to our opinion of ourselves; vanity, to what we would have others think of us.
There is nothing like staying at home for real comfort.
Give a girl an education and introduce her properly into the world, and ten to one but she has the means of settling well, without further expense to anybody.
For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbors and laugh at them in our turn?
Life seems but a quick succession of busy nothings.
Selfishness must always be forgiven you know, because there is no hope of a cure.
or simply: