“Conduct! Is conduct everything? One may conduct oneself excellently, and yet break one's heart.”
“Of course, Lady Arabella could not suckle the young heir herself. Ladies Arabella never can. They are gifted with the powers of being mothers, but not nursing mothers. Nature gives them bosoms for show, but not for use. So Lady Arabella had a wet-nurse.”
“Mary, it must be remembered, was very nearly of the same age as Frank; but, as I and others have so often said before, 'Women grow on the sunny side of the wall.”
“Buying and selling is good and necessary; it is very necessary, and may, possibly, be very good; but it cannot be the noblest work of man; and let us hope that it may not in our time be esteemed the noblest work of an Englishman.”
“The castle itself was a huge brick pile, built in the days of William III., which, though they were grand days for the construction of the constitution, were not very grand for architecture of a more material description.”
“such was the beauty of the landscape, that a lover of scenery would be tempted thus to lose himself.”
“Rest and quiet are the comforts of those who have been content to remain in obscurity.”
“Oh! do look at Miss Oriel's bonnet the next time you see her. I cannot understand why it should be so, but I am sure of this—no English fingers could put together such a bonnet as that; and I am nearly sure that no French fingers could do it in England.”
“Sell yourself for money! why, if I were a man I would not sell one jot of liberty for mountains of gold. What! tie myself in the heyday of my youth to a person I could never love, for a price! perjure myself, destroy myself—and not only myself, but her also, in order that I might live idly! Oh, heavens! Mr Gresham! can it be that the words of such a woman as your aunt have sunk so deeply in your heart; have blackened you so foully as to make you think of such vile folly as this? Have you forgotten your soul, your spirit, your man's energy, the treasure of your heart? And you, so young! For shame, Mr Gresham! for shame—for shame.”
“Great was the anger of Lady Arabella, loud were the protestations of the girl, mute the woe of her father, piteous the tears of her mother, inexorable the judgment of the Greshamsbury world. But”
“England a commercial country! Yes; as Venice was. She may excel other nations in commerce, but yet it is not that in which she most prides herself, in which she most excels. Merchants as such are not the first men among us; though it perhaps be open, barely open, to a merchant to become one of them. Buying and selling is good and necessary; it is very necessary, and may, possibly, be very good; but it cannot be the noblest work of man; and let us hope that it may not in our time be esteemed the noblest work of an Englishman.”
“...[A]ll manner of marriages are considered to be comme il faut.”
“Wounds sometimes must be opened in order that they may be healed.”
“He had a pride in being a poor man of a high family; he had a pride in repudiating the very family of which he was proud; and he had a special pride in keeping his pride silently to himself.”
“but things had arranged themselves, as they often do, rather than been arranged by him.”
“All the world feels that a man when married acquires some of the attributes of an old woman—he”
“the principal duty which a parent owed to a child was to make him happy. Not”
“Frank Gresham, when twitted with being a Whig, foreswore the de Courcy family; and then, when ridiculed as having been thrown over by the Tories, foreswore his father’s old friends. So”
“From a young age I had learned to get over--to cover my tracks emotionally, to hide or ignore my problems in the belief that they were mine alone to solve.”
“She was trying to whisper, but she might as well have yelled under an echoing bridge.”
“The important thing is to be able to live in a place or a situation where you must use your sixth sense all the time.”
“Eve: "Keep your mind off sex"
Roake: "Why? It's so happy there.”
“Less is less. Heartbreak is heartbreak. You think I'm sitting here gloating. Telling myself that my suffering beats yours? Hurt is hurt. You don't measure these things.”
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