Kindle Notes & Highlights
She is less like a sprightly French widow, than a foolish English girl, who loves for the first time. But I suppose, when the heart is really touched, the feelings of all nations have a pretty near resemblance:
I flatter myself, the future will pay us for the past.
I feel such delight in the idea of making her happy, that I think nothing a trifle which can be in the least degree pleasing to her. I could even wish to invent new pleasures for her gratification.
A marriage where not only esteem, but passion is kept awake, is, I am convinced, the most perfect state of sublunary happiness: but it requires great care to keep this tender plant alive; especially, I blush to say it, on our side. Women are naturally more constant, education improves this happy disposition: the husband who has the politeness, the attention, and delicacy of a lover, will always be beloved.
The inebriation, the tumult of passion, will undoubtedly grow less after marriage, that is, after peaceable possession; hopes and fears alone keep it in its first violent state: but, though it subsides, it gives place to a tenderness still more pleasing, to a soft, and, if you will allow the expression, a voluptuous tranquillity: the pleasure does not cease, does not even lessen; it only changes its nature.
My little farm will induce only friends to visit us; and it is not less pleasing to me for that circumstance: one of the misfortunes of a very exalted station, is the slavery it subjects us to in regard to the ceremonial world.
I never loved my sweet girl so tenderly as since she has been mine; my heart acknowledges the obligation of her having trusted the future happiness or misery of her life in my hands.
I do not indeed feel the same tumultuous emotion at seeing her; but I feel a sensation equally delightful: a joy more tranquil, but not less lively.
love stole upon me imperceptibly, and en badinant; I was enslaved, when I only thought myself amused.
There is something in your person, as well as manner, which I am convinced must be particularly pleasing to women; with an extremely agreable form, you have a certain manly, spirited air, which promises them a protector; a look of understanding, which is the indication of a pleasing companion; a sensibility of countenance, which speaks a friend and a lover; to which I ought to add, an affectionate, constant attention to women, and a polite indifference to men, which above all things flatters the vanity of the sex.
There is in true sensibility of soul, such a resistless charm, that we are even affected by that of which we are not ourselves the object: we feel a degree of emotion at being witness to the affection which another inspires.
I fancied he loved me, and that gratitude obliged me to a return; carried away by the ardor of my friends for this marriage, I rather suffered than approved his addresses; I had not courage to resist the torrent, I therefore gave way to it; I loved no other, I fancied my want of affection a native coldness of temper. I felt a languid esteem, which I endeavored to flatter myself was love; but the moment I saw you, the delusion vanished.
As Emily’s fault, if love can allow her one, is an excess of romantic generosity, the fault of most uncorrupted female minds, I am very anxious to marry her before she knows of this proposal, lest she should think it a proof of tenderness to aim at making me wretched, in order to make me rich.
I think my present income just what a wise man would wish, and very sincerely join in the philosophical prayer of the royal prophet, “Give me neither poverty nor riches.”
Youth, health, beauty, understanding, are substantial goods; wealth and title comparatively ideal ones;
Be assured your Emily never breathed a sigh but for her Rivers!
I love the country: the taste for rural scenes is the taste born with us. After seeking pleasure in vain amongst the works of art, we are forced to come back to the point from whence we set out, and find our enjoyment in the lovely simplicity of nature.
In what words shall I convey to the most beloved of his sex, the ardent tenderness of my soul? how convince him of what I suffer from being forced to make a request so contrary to the dictates of my heart?
The tender affections are the only sources of true pleasure; the highest, the most respectable titles, in the eye of reason, are the tender ones of friend, of husband, and of father: it is from the dear soft ties of social love your Rivers expects his felicity.
Indeed, I am not very fond of letting Bell stay long amongst you; for she gives me such an account of your attention and complaisance to Mrs. Rivers, that I am afraid she will think me a careless fellow when we meet again.
I am a most intolerable monopolizer of the sex; in short, I have very little relish for any conversation but theirs: I love their sweet prattle beyond all the sense and learning in the world. Not that I would insinuate they have less understanding than we, or are less capable of learning, or even that it less becomes them. On the contrary, all such knowledge as tends to adorn and soften human life and manners, is, in my opinion, peculiarly becoming in women.
I am very conscious, my dear Bell, of not meriting the praises my Rivers lavishes on me, yet the pleasure I receive from them is not the less lively for that consideration; on the contrary, the less I deserve these praises, the more flattering they are to me, as the stronger proofs of his love; of that love which gives ideal charms, which adorns, which embellishes its object.
Happy ourselves, we wish not to destroy the tranquillity of others; intent on cares equally useful and pleasing, with no views but to improve our fortunes by means equally profitable to ourselves and to our country, we form no schemes of dishonest ambition; and therefore disturb no government to serve our private designs.
In the voyage of life, passion is the tempest, love the gentle gale.
In the same proportion as we lose our confidence in the virtues of others, we lose our proper happiness.
You men are horrid, rapacious animals, with your spirit of enterprize, and your nonsense: ever wanting more land than you can cultivate, and more money than you can spend. That eternal pursuit of gain, that rage of accumulation, in which you are educated, corrupts your hearts, and robs you of half the pleasures of life.
Do you know, Rivers, I have a fancy you and Fitzgerald will always be happy husbands? this is something owing to yourselves, and something to us; you have both that manly tenderness, and true generosity, which inclines you to love creatures who have paid you the compliment of making their happiness or misery depend entirely on you, and partly to the little circumstance of your being married to two of the most agreable women breathing.
I should have told you, he insists on never seeing the letters I write, and gives this reason for it, That he should be a great loser by seeing them, as it would restrain my pen when I talk of him.
’Tis too common to see the most innocent, nay, even the most laudable actions censured by the world; as we cannot, however, eradicate the prejudices of others, it is wisdom to yield to them in things which are indifferent.
he was enchanting; polite, lively, soft, insinuating, adorned with every outward grace which could embellish virtue, or hide vice from view, to see and to love him was almost the same thing.
The human heart is created weak, not wicked: avid of pleasure and of gain; but with a mixture of benevolence which prevents our seeking either to the destruction of others. Nothing can be more false than that we are naturally inclined to evil: we are indeed naturally inclined to gratify the selfish passions of every kind; but those passions are not evil in themselves, they only become so from excess.
A false and ill-judged method of instruction, by which we imbibe prejudices instead of truths, makes us regard the human race as beasts of prey; not as brothers, united by one common bond, and promoting the general interest by pursuing our own particular one.
I blush to say, that when I first married I have more than once been in danger, from the mere boyish desire of conquest, notwithstanding my adoration for your lovely sister: such is the force of habit, for I must have been infinitely a loser by changing. I am now perfectly safe; my vanity has taken another turn: I pique myself in on keeping the heart of the loveliest woman that ever existed, as a nobler conquest than attracting the notice of a hundred coquets, who would be equally flattered by the attention of any other man, at least any other man who had the good fortune to be as fashionable.
She is my friend, my companion, as well as mistress; her wit, her sprightliness, her pleasing kind of knowledge, fill with delight those hours which are so tedious with a fool, however lovely.
She has convinced me, that if beauty is the mother, delicacy is the nurse of love. Venus has lent her her cestus, and shares with her the attendance of the Graces. My vagrant passions, like the rays of the sun collected in a burning glass, are now united in one point.
I have this moment a letter from Temple which has set my heart at rest: he writes like a lover, yet owns his past danger, with a frankness which speaks more strongly than any professions could do, the real present state of his heart.
He has that warmth of temper which is the natural soil of the virtues; but which is unhappily, at the same time, most apt to produce indiscretions.
As we are beings formed for, and not capable of being happy without, society, it is the duty of every one to endeavor to make it as easy and agreable as they can; which is only to be done by such an attention to others as is consistent with what we owe to ourselves; all we give them in civility will be re-paid us in respect: insolence and ill-breeding are detestable to all mankind.
I chuse this dress because I have heard my dear Rivers admire it; to be one moment more pleasing in his eyes, is an object worthy all my attention.
I remember my aunt Cecily, who died at sixty-six, without ever having felt the least spark of affection for any human being, used to tell me, a prudent modest woman never loved any thing but herself. For my part, I think all the kind propensities of the heart ought rather to be cherished than checked; that one is allowed to esteem merit even in the naughty creature, man.
That desire of pleasing; which one feels much the most strongly for a male friend, is in itself a very agreable emotion. You will say, I am a coquet even in friendship; and I am not quite sure you are not in the right.
Women cannot say civil things to each other; and if they could, they would be something insipid; whereas a male friend—
We are so little alone, that I find our moments of unreserved conversation too short; whenever I leave her, I recollect a thousand things I had to say, a thousand new ideas to communicate, and am impatient for the hour of seeing again, without restraint, the most amiable and pleasing of woman-kind.
Pride, and the parade of life, destroy all happiness: our whole felicity depends on our choice in marriage, yet we chuse from motives more trifling than would determine us in the common affairs of life.
Ancient lovers had only dragons to combat; ours have the worse monsters of avarice and ambition.
A woman who has vanity without affection will be pleased to hear of your past conquests, and regard them as victims immolated to her superior charms: to her, therefore, it is right to talk of them; but to flatter the heart, and give delight to a woman who truly loves, you should appear too much taken up with the present passion to look back to the past: you should not even present to her imagination the thought that you have had other engagements: we know such things are, but had rather the idea should not be awakened: I may be wrong, but I speak from my own feelings.
This is just what I want to bring Fitzgerald to; but the perverse monkey won’t quarrel with me, do all I can: I am sure this is not my fault, for I give him reason every day of his life. Shenstone says admirably, “That reconciliation is the tenderest part of love and friendship: the soul here discovers a kind of elasticity, and, being forced back, returns with an additional violence.”
I have a notion there is nothing so very shocking in being an oldish gentlewoman; what one loses in charms, is made up in the happy liberty of doing and saying whatever one pleases. Adieu!
I think a worthy man not only may have, but ought to have, an attention to making his way in the world, and improving his situation in it, by every means consistent with probity and honor, and with his own real happiness.
With what horror do we regard a man who is kept! and a man who marries from interested views alone, is kept in the strongest sense of the word. He is equally a purchased slave, with no distinction but that his bondage is of longer continuance.
