... consequence has its tax;...

Ever since her being turned into a Churchill, she has out-Churchill'd them all in high and mighty claims.

I wish as well as everybody else to be perfectly happy, but like everybody else it must be in my own way.

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.

The sooner every party breaks up the better.

At my time of life opinions are tolerably fixed. It is not likely that I should now see or hear anything to change them.

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

I could not sit down to write a serious romance under any other motive than to save my life.