But strange things may be generally accounted for if their cause be fairly searched out.

But where other powers of entertainment are wanting, the true philosopher will derive benefit from such as are given.

It sometimes happens that a woman is handsomer at twenty-nine than she was ten years before.

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

A watch is always too fast or too slow. I cannot be dictated to by a watch.

To look almost pretty is an acquisition of higher delight to a girl who has been looking plain the first fifteen years of her life than a beauty from her cradle can ever receive.

No young lady can be justified in falling in love before the gentleman's love is declared, it must be very improper that a young lady should dream of a gentleman before the gentleman is first known to have dreamt of her.

Where there is a wish to please, one ought to overlook, and one does overlook a great deal.

…and all that can be said of one's happiness depending entirely on any particular person, it is not meant—it is not fit—it is not possible that it should be so.

"I do not understand you."
"Then we are on very unequal terms, for I understand you perfectly well."
"Me? Yes; I cannot speak well enough to be unintelligible."

Where people wish to attach, they should always be ignorant. To come with a well-informed mind is to come with an inability of administering to the vanity of others, which a sensible person would always wish to avoid.

To be always firm must be to be often obstinate. When properly to relax is the trial of judgment.

Facts or opinions which are to pass through the hands of so many, to be misconceived by folly in one, and ignorance in another, can hardly have much truth left.

I have frequently detected myself in such kind of mistakes, in a total misapprehension of character in some point or other: fancying people so much more gay or grave, or ingenious or stupid than they really are, and I can hardly tell why or in what the deception originated. Sometimes one is guided by what they say of themselves, and very frequently by what other people say of them, without giving oneself time to deliberate and judge.

A mind lively and at ease, can do with seeing nothing, and can see nothing that does not answer.

When he talked, she heard the same voice, and discerned the same mind.