on behalf of the author – Character Quotes

We have to resume it where we had left off, and there steals over us a terrible sense of the necessity for the continuance of energy in the same wearisome round of stereotyped habits, or a wild longing, it may be, that our eyelids might open some morning upon a world that had been refashioned anew in the darkness for our pleasure, a world in which things would have fresh shapes and colours, and be changed, or have other secrets, a world in which the past would have little or no place, or survive, at any rate, in no conscious form of obligation or regret, the remembrance even of joy having its bitterness, and the memories of pleasure their pain.

If adventures will not befall a young lady in her own village, she must seek them abroad.

A loss may be sometimes a gain.

A conflagration can create an aurora, no doubt, but why not await the dawn?

It would be mortifying to the feelings of many ladies, could they be made to understand how little the heart of man is affected by what is costly or new in their attire; how little it is biased by the texture of their muslin, and how unsusceptible of peculiar tenderness towards the spotted, the sprigged, the mull, or the jackonet. Woman is fine for her own satisfaction alone. No man will admire her the more, no woman will like her the better for it. Neatness and fashion are enough for the former, and a something of shabbiness or impropriety will be most endearing to the latter.

At the age of six I wanted to be a cook. At seven I wanted to be Napoleon. And my ambition has been growing steadily ever since.

Once so much to each other!
Now nothing!

There are some situations of the human mind in which good sense has very little power.

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

Diversity of opinion about a work of art shows that the work is new, complex, and vital. When critics disagree the artist is in accord withhimself. We can forgive a man for making a useful thing as long as he does not admire it. The only excuse for making a useless thing is that one admires it intensely. All art is quite useless.

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.

It was the passions about whose origin we deceived ourselves that tyrannised most strongly over us. Our weakest motives were those of whose nature we were conscious. It often happened that when we thought we were experimenting on others we were really experimenting on ourselves.

Our habits are the Heavens' gifts –
They are the substitutes for bliss.

The consciousness that amongst his audience there was one whose temperament he wished to fascinate, seemed to give his wit keenness, and to lend colour to his imagination.