MihaElla > Recent Status Updates

I must lay down my pen. Mistinesses, which give to my deluged eye the appearance of all the colours in the rainbow, will not permit me to write on...

Many a young creature has thought she could not love a man,with whom she has afterwards been very happy.Few women,child,marry their first loves

That may be the reason there are so few happy marriages

But there are few first impressions fit to be encouraged

I am afraid so too,madam.I have a very indifferent opinion of light & first impressions.But,as I have often said,all I wish for,is to have leave to live single

Pray, madam, (provokingly interrogated I,) was he not known to have been as wild a man, when he was at first introduced into our family, as he now is said to be? Yet then, the common phrases of wild oats, and black oxen, and such like, were qualifiers; and marriage, and the wife's discretion, were to perform wonders—but (turning to my sister) I find I have said too much.

The folly of the creature!—How natural is it for people, when they set their hearts upon any thing, to think every body must see with their eyes!

Bella has not a feeling heart. The highest joy in this life she is not capable of: but then she saves herself many griefs, by her impenetrableness—yet, for ten times the pain that such a sensibility is attended with, would I not part with the pleasure it brings with it.

Let me ask you, my dear, said she, how you now keep your account of the disposition of your time? How many hours, in the twenty-four, do you devote to your needle? How many to your prayers? How many to letter-writing? And how many to love? I doubt, I doubt, my little dear, was her arch expression, the latter article is like Aaron's rod, and swallows up all the rest!—Tell me, is it not so?

[...] But to think of living with and living for a man one abhors, what a sad thing is that!

But for a man to be vain of his person, how effeminate! If such a one happens to have genius, it seldom strikes deep into intellectual subjects. His outside usually runs away with him. To adorn, and perhaps, intending to adorn, to render ridiculous that person, takes up all his attention. All he does is personal; that is to say, for himself: all he admires, is himself:

For, as to our sex, if a fine woman should be led by the opinion of the world, to be vain and conceited upon her form and features; and that to such a degree, as to have neglected the more material and more durable recommendations, the world will be ready to excuse her; since a pretty fool, in all she says, and in all she does, will please, we know not why.

I never was in love as it is called;& whether this be it,or not,I must submit to you.But will venture to think it,if it be,no such mighty monarch,or unconquerable power,as I have heard it represented;& it must have met with greater encouragement than I think I have given it,to be absolutely unconquerable;since I am persuaded,that I could yet,without a throb,most willingly give up the one man to get rid of the other

[...] but, if you are in love, you are; and love, like the vapours, is the deeper rooted for having no sufficient cause assignable for its hold.

“But I used then to say, and I still am of opinion, that he wants a heart; and if he does, he wants every thing. A wrong head may be convinced, may have a right turn given it; but who is able to give a heart, if a heart be wanting? Divine grace, working a miracle, or next to a miracle, can only change a bad heart. Should not one fly the man who is but suspected of such a one?”

What measures will they fall upon next?—Will they not recede when they find, that it must be a rooted antipathy, and nothing else, that could make a temper, not naturally inflexible, so sturdy?
Adieu, my dear. Be you happy!—To know that it is in your power to be so, is all that seems wanting to make you so.

“This is a mad girl; but yet I love her!—And she is my own.”

Remember that you found me out in a moment. You challenged me. I owned directly, that there was only my pride between the man and me; for I could not endure, I told you, to think it in the power of any fellow living to give me a moment's uneasiness. And then my man, as I have elsewhere said, was not such a one as yours; so I had reason to impute full as much to my own inconsideration, as to his power over me;

I will throw myself into my charmer's presence. I have twice already attempted it in vain. I shall then see what I may depend upon from her favour. If I thought I had no prospect of that, I should be tempted to carry her off. That would be a rape worthy of a Jupiter!

P. S.—I know your knack at letter-writing. If you send me an answer to this, I will return it unopened; for I will not argue with your perverseness in so plain a case.

Dearest Miss,
Your letter has had a very contrary effect upon me, to what you seem to have expected from it. It has doubly convinced me of the excellency of your mind,& of the honour of your disposition. Call it selfish, or what you please, I must persist in my suit; and happy shall I be, if, by patience and perseverance, and a steady and unalterable devoir, I may at last overcome the difficulty laid in my way.

If I am capable of judging, our tempers and inclinations are vastly different. Any other of my sex will make you happier than I can. The treatment I meet with, and the obstinacy, as it is called, with which I support myself under it, ought to convince you of this, were I not able to give so good a reason for this my supposed perverseness, as that I cannot consent to marry a man whom I cannot value.

So we think, whatever you think: and whose thoughts are to be preferred? You may be wittier than we; but if you are wiser, we have lived some of us, let me tell you, to very little purpose, thirty or forty years longer than you.

I love you dearly still, miss. I think you, though my niece, one of the finest young gentlewomen I ever saw. But, upon my conscience, I think you ought to obey your parents, and oblige me & my brother John; for you know very well that we have nothing but your good at heart,—consistently, indeed, with the good & honour of all of us. What must we think of any one of it, who would not promote the good of the whole?

If you are not besotted to that man, I am sure you will like it. If you are were Mr Solmes an angel, it would signify nothing: for the devil is love, and love is the devil, when it gets into any of your heads. Many examples have I seen of that.

[...] honey-moon lasts not now-a-days above a fortnight. Marriage is a queer state, child, whether paired by the parties or by their friends. Out of three brothers of us, you know, there was but one had courage to marry. And why was it, do you think? We were wise by other people's experience.

“The devil's in your sex! God forgive me for saying so—the nicest of them will prefer a vile rake and wh—I suppose I must not repeat the word:—the word will offend, when the vicious denominated by that word will be chosen!—I had not been a bachelor to this time, if I had not seen such a mass of contradictions in you all.—Such gnat-strainers and camel-swallowers, as venerable Holy Writ has it.”

“he is but a second-place love. Riches were, are, and always will be, his predominant passion”

I beseech you, sir, to let the natural turn and bent of his mind & my mind be considered: What are his qualities, by which he would hope to win my esteem?—Dear, dear sir, if I am to be compelled, let it be in favour of a man that can read and write—that can teach me something: For what a husband must that man make, who can do nothing but command;& needs himself the instruction he should be qualified to give?

Marriage is a very solemn engagement, enough to make a young creature's heart ache, with the best prospects, when she thinks seriously of it!—To be given up to a strange man; to be ingrafted into a strange family; to give up her very name, as a mark of her becoming his absolute and dependent property; to be obliged to prefer this strange man to father, mother—to every body:—and his humours to all her own—or

All my fear arises from the little hold I have in the heart of this charming frost-piece: such a constant glow upon her lovely features: eyes so sparkling: limbs so divinely turned: health so florid: youth so blooming: air so animated—to have an heart so impenetrable: and I, the hitherto successful Lovelace, the addresser—How can it be?

“I thought she loved me at least as well as I believed I loved her: nay, I had the vanity to suppose she could not help it.”

Those confounded poets, with their terrenely-celestial descriptions, did as much with me as the lady: they fired my imagination, and set me upon a desire to become a goddess-maker. I must needs try my new-fledged pinions in sonnet, elogy, and madrigal. I must have a Cynthia, a Stella, a Sacharissa, as well as the best of them: darts and flames, and the devil knows what, must I give to my Cupid.