MihaElla > Recent Status Updates

[…] if I doubt her love, I can put her to trials as mortifying to her niceness, as glorious to my pride.—For, let me tell thee, dearly as I love her, if I thought there was but the shadow of a doubt in her mind, whether she preferred me to any man living, I would show her no mercy.

You need not be so much afraid of going too far with Betty. If you should make a match with her, she is a very likely creature, though a vixen, as you say. I have an admirable receipt to cure a termagant wife.—Never fear, Joseph, but thou shalt be master of thine house. If she be very troublesome, I can teach thee how to break her heart in a twelvemonth, and honestly too; or the precept would not be mine.

And so to save him an apprehended rashness, I have rushed into a real one myself. And what vexes me more is, that it is plain to me now, by all his behaviour, that he had as great a confidence in my weakness, as I had in my own strength. And so, in a point entirely relative to my honour, he has triumphed; for he has not been mistaken in me, while I have in myself!

He threw himself upon his knees at my feet—Who can bear, said he, [with an ardour that could not be feigned, his own eyes glistening,] who can bear to behold such sweet emotion?—O charmer of my heart, [and, respectfully still kneeling, he took my hand with both his, pressing it to his lips,] command me with you, command me from you: in every way I am all implicit obedience—

My heart,in short,misgives me less, when I resolve this way, than when I think of the other:& in so strong and involuntary a bias, the heart is, as I may say, conscience. & well cautions the wise man: "Let the counsel of thine own heart stand;for there is no man more faithful unto thee than it:for a man's mind is sometimes wont to tell him more than seven watchmen,that sit above in an high tower.”(Ecclesiasticus)

But who would wish to drain off or dry up a refreshing current, because it now and then puts us to some little inconvenience by its overflowings?
In other words, who would not allow for the liveliness of a spirit, which for one painful sensibility gives an hundred pleasurable ones; and the one in consequence of the other?

My dearest friend, tell me, have I done wrong?—Yet do not say I have, if you think it; for should all the world besides condemn me, I shall have some comfort, if you do not. The first time I ever besought you to flatter me. That, of itself, is an indication that I have done wrong, and am afraid of hearing the truth.—O tell me (but yet do not tell me) if I have done wrong!

The man, my dear, has got the letter!—What a strange diligence! I wish he mean me well, that he takes so much pains!—Yet, to be ingenuous, I must own that I should be displeased if he took less—I wish, however, he had been an hundred miles off!—What an advantage have I given him over me!

[…] that love was a fleeting thing, little better than a name, where morality and virtue did not distinguish the object of it; that a choice made by its dictates was seldom happy, at least not durably so; nor was it to be wondered at, when it naturally exalted the object above its merits, and made the lover blind to faults that were visible to everybody else;

To do evil, that good may come of it, is forbidden. And shall I do evil, yet know not whether good may come of it or not?
Forbid it, Heaven! that Clarissa Harlowe should have it in her thought to serve, or even to save herself, at the expense of her sincerity, and by a studied deceit!
And is there, after all, no way to escape one evil, but by plunging myself into another? What an ill-fated creature am I!

But I will not oppress you, my dearest friend, with further reflections of this sort. I will take them all into myself. Surely I have a mind that has room for them. My afflictions are too sharp to last long. The crisis is at hand. Happier times you bid me hope for. I will hope.

— A quarrel has its conveniences sometimes. Yet too much love, I think, is as bad as too little.

“O my dear! what is worldly wisdom but the height of folly.”

My mother bid her say, if I expostulated about these orders, and about my pen and ink, that reading was more to the purpose, at present, than writing: that by the one, I might be taught my duty; that the other, considering whom I was believed to write to, only stiffened my will: that my needle-works had better be pursued than my airings; which were observed to be taken in all weathers.

The Lord have mercy upon us! said she.—What a confusion of a house is this! [hurrying up and down, fanning herself with her handkerchief.] Such angry masters and mistresses!—such an obstinate young lady!—such an humble lover!—such enraged uncles!—such—O dear!—dear! what a topsy-turvy house is this!—And all for what, trow?—only because a young lady may be happy, and will not,—

[…] your pen and ink (soon as you are to go away) will not be long in your power, I do assure you, miss. And then, having lost that amusement, it will be seen, how a mind so active as yours will be able to employ itself.

Don't be surprised, Mr Solmes, don't be concerned at this. We know (and rapt out a sad oath) what women will say in their wrath; the wind is not more boisterous, nor more changeable; and again he swore to that.—If you think it worth your while to wait for such an ungrateful girl as this, I'll engage she'll veer about; I'll engage she shall. And a third time violently swore to it.

A thoughtful mind is not a blessing to be coveted, unless it had such a happy vivacity with it as yours; a vivacity, which enables a person to enjoy the present, without being over-anxious about the future.

To know your own happiness, and that it is now, nor to leave it to after-reflection to look back upon the preferable past with a heavy and self-accusing heart, that you did not choose it when you might have chosen it, is all that is necessary to complete your felicity!—And this power is wished you

Mrs Norton used to say, from her reverend father, that youth was the time of life for imagination and fancy to work in. Then, were a writer to lay by his works till riper years and experience should direct the fire rather to glow, than to flame out; something between both might perhaps be produced, that would not displease a judicious eye.

Sometimes I want air,& am better the moment I am out of my chamber.—Sometimes spirits;& then my bantams & pheasants or the cascade divert me; the former, by their inspiriting liveliness;the latter, more solemnly, by its echoing (lashings,& hollow murmurs.—Sometimes, solitude is of all things my wish;& the awful silence of the night, the spangled element,& the rising & setting sun, how promotive of contemplation!

People low in station have often minds not sordid. Nay, I have sometimes thought, that (even take number for number) there are more honest low people, than honest high. In the one, honesty is their chief pride. In the other, the love of power, of grandeur, of pleasure, mislead; and that and their ambition induce a paramount pride, which too often swallows up the more laudable one.

Does it not, moreover, manifest a firmness of mind, in an unhappy person, to keep hope alive? To hope for better days, is half to deserve them; for could we have just ground for such a hope, if we did not resolve to deserve what that hope bids us aspire to?—Then who shall befriend a person who forsakes herself?

[...] Spare me not therefore because I am your friend. For that very reason spare me not. I may feel your edge, fine as it is. I may be pained; you would lose your end if I were not; but after the first sensibility, (as I have said more than once before) I will love you the better, and my amended heart shall be all yours; and it will then be more worthy to be yours.

You have very kindly accounted for your silence. People in misfortune are always in doubt. They are too apt to turn even unavoidable accidents into slights and neglects; especially in those whose favourable opinion they wish to preserve.

If ever I should be persuaded to have him, I shall watch how the obsequious lover goes off, and how the imperative husband comes upon him; in short, how he ascends, and how I descend, in the matrimonial wheel, never to take my turn again but by fits and starts, like the feeble struggles of a sinking state for its dying liberty.

I shall be all impatience to know how this matter ends between you and him. But few inches of brick wall between you so lately, and now such mountains?—And you think to hold it?—May be so!

But you are afraid you shall be thought tame, perhaps, when married. That you shall not be thought manly enough, I warrant!—And this was poor Mr Howe's fear. And many a tug did this lordly fear cost us both, God knows!—Many more than needed, I am sure; and more than ought to have been, had he known how to bear and forbear, as is the duty of those who pretend to have most sense—

What workman loves not a sharp tool to work with? But is there not more danger from a sharp tool than from a blunt one? And what workman will throw away a sharp tool because it may cut his fingers? Wit may be likened to a sharp tool. And there is something very pretty in wit, let me tell you. Often and often have I been forced to smile at her arch turns upon me, when I could have beat her for them.

[...] But if you are so indifferent, Mr Hickman—if you think you can part with her for her skittish tricks—if my interest in your favour—why, Mr Hickman, I must tell you, that my Nancy is worth bearing with. If she be foolish, what is that owing to?—Is it not to her wit? Let me tell you, sir, you cannot have the convenience without the inconvenience.