The Small House at Allington

And, above all things, never think that you're not good enough yourself. A man should never think that. My belief is that in life people will take you very much at your own reckoning.

There are things that will not have themselves buried and put out of sight, as though they had never been.

I doubt whether any girl would be satisfied with her lover’s mind if she knew the whole of it.

Can it be that any mother really expects her son to sit alone evening after evening in a dingy room drinking bad tea, and reading good books? And yet it seems that mothers do so expect,—

He has gone, Mamma,' she said, as she entered the breakfast-room. 'And now we'll go back to our work-a-day ways. It has been all Sunday for me the last six weeks.

When he entered the drawing-room she was sitting alone, in a large, low chair, made without arms, so as to admit the full expansion of her dress, but hollowed and rounded at the back, so as to afford her the support that was necessary to her. She had barely spoke three words since she had left the dining-room, but the time had not passed heavily with her.

A sermon is not to tell you what you are, but what you ought to be, and a novel should tell you not what you are to get, but what you’d like to get.

When last days are coming, they should be allowed to come and to glide away without special notice or mention. And as for last moments, there should be none such. Let them ever be ended, even before their presence has been acknowledged.

Why is it that girls so constantly do this,—so frequently ask men who have loved them to be present at their marriages with other men? There is no triumph in it. It is done in sheer kindness and affection. They intend to offer something which shall soften and not aggravate the sorrow that they have caused. "You can't marry me yourself," the lady seems to say. "But the next greatest blessing which I can offer you shall be yours,—you shall see me married to somebody else." I fully appreciate the intention, but in honest truth, I doubt the eligibility of the proffered entertainment. On the present occasion John Eames seemed to be of this opinion, for he did not at once accept the invitation.

We are not content in looking to our newspapers for all the information that earth and human intellect can afford; but we demand from them what we might demand if a daily sheet could come to us from the world of spirits. The result, of course, is this,—that the papers do pretend that they have come daily from the world of spirits; but the oracles are very doubtful, as were those of old