MihaElla > Recent Status Updates

I boasted that I was once in love before.It was in my early manhood—with that quality jilt,whose infidelity I vowed to revenge upon as many of the sex as shall come into my power.I believe,in different climes,I have already sacrificed a hecatomb to my Nemesis,in pursuance of this vow.But upon recollecting what I was then,& comparing it with what I find myself now,I cannot say that I was ever in love before

Cannot I indeed reform?—I have but one vice;—Have I, Jack?—Thou knowest my heart, if any man living does. As far as I know it myself thou knowest it. But 'tis a cursed deceiver; for it has many a time imposed upon its master—Master, did I say? Then am I not now; nor have I been from the moment I beheld this angel of a woman. Prepared indeed as I was by her character before I saw her

One of the first conditions of our mutual friendship was, that each should say or write to the other whatever was upon her mind, without any offence to be taken; a condition, that is indeed indispensable in friendship.

They were my father's lively spirits that first made him an interest in her gentle bosom. They were the same spirits turned inward, as I have heretofore observed, that made him so impatient when the cruel malady seized him. He always loved my mother.

“Such a sun in a family, where there are none but faint twinklers, how could they bear it! Why, my dear, they must look upon you as a prodigy among them: and prodigies, you know, though they obtain our admiration, never attract our love.”

“But enough for the present of a creature so very various.”

“For a girl to lay so much stress upon going to church, and yet resolve to defy her parents, in an article of the greatest consequence to them, and to the whole family, is an absurdity. You are recommended, Miss, to the practice of your private devotions. May they be efficacious upon the mind of one of the most pervicacious young creatures that ever was heard of!”

“Ah, girl, never say your heart is free! You deceive yourself if you think it is.”

“I am sorry that I have had so little merit as to have made no deeper impressions of favour for me in their hearts”

“I must accommodate myself, madam, to my circumstances; much only is required where much is given. It becomes me to be thankful for what I have had. I have reason to bless you, madam, and my good Mrs Norton, for bringing me up to be satisfied with little; with much less, I will venture to say, than my father's indulgence annually confers upon me. And then I thought of the old Roman and his lentils.”

“So, my dear, were we perfect, (which no one can be,) we could not be happy in this life, unless those with whom we have to deal (those more especially who have any control upon us) were governed by the same principles. But then does not the good doctor's conclusion recur—That we have nothing to do, but to choose what is right; to be steady in the pursuit of it; and to leave the issue to Providence?”

“Mock me not with outward gestures of respect. The heart, Clary, is what I want.

Indeed, madam, you have it. It is not so much mine as my mamma's!

Fine talking!—As somebody says, if words were to pass for duty, Clarissa Harlowe would be the dutifulest child breathing.”

“You look very sullen, Clary.
I hope not, madam.

If children would always be children—parents—And there she stopped.

I don't love to see the girl look so sullen.
Indeed, madam, I am not sullen.”

One of the most provoking things in the world is, to have people cry for what they can help!

“I have not been in bed all night; nor am I in the least drowsy. Expectation, and hope, and doubt, (an uneasy state!) kept me sufficiently wakeful. I stepped down at my usual time, that it might not be known I had not been in bed; and gave directions in the family way.”

“I was silent. To say the truth, I was just then sullenly silent. My heart was too big. I thought it was hard to be thus given up by my mother; and that she should make a will so uncontrollable as my brother's, her will.—My mother, my dear, though I must not say so, was not obliged to marry against her liking. My mother loved my father.”

[...] Parents, when children are young, are pleased with every thing they do. You have been a good child upon the whole: but we have hitherto rather complied with you, than you with us. Now that you are grown up to marriageable years, is the test; especially as your grandfather has made you independent, as we may say, in preference to those who had prior expectations upon that estate.”

“my dearest mamma, in what has my conduct been faulty, that, like a giddy creature, I must be forced to marry, to save me from—From what? Let me beseech you, madam, to be the guardian of my reputation! Let not your Clarissa be precipitated into a state she wishes not to enter into with any man; and this upon a supposition, that otherwise she shall marry herself, and disgrace her whole family”

“O my dear friend, I have had a sad conflict! Trial upon trial; conference upon conference!—But what law, what ceremony, can give a man a right to a heart which abhors him more than it does any living creature?”

[...] Nor did it appear, that he was so bad a man as he had been represented to be; wild indeed; but it was at a gay time of life; he was a man of sense; and he was sure that his niece would not have him, if she had not good reason to think him reformed, or that there was a likelihood that she could reform him by her example...

Indeed, my dear, THIS man is not THE man. I have great objections to him. My heart throbs not after him. I glow not, but with indignation against myself for having given room for such an imputation.—But you must not, my dearest friend, construe common gratitude into love. I cannot bear that you should. But if ever I should have the misfortune to think it love, I promise you that I will acquaint you with it.

What odd heads some people have!

— Astonishing!

“For a beginning love is acted by a subtle spirit; and oftentimes discovers itself to a by-stander, when the person possessed (why should I not call it possessed?) knows not it has such a demon.”

You are all too rich to be happy, child. For must not each of you, by the constitutions of your family, marry to be still richer? People who know in what their main excellence consists, are not to be blamed (are they?) for cultivating and improving what they think most valuable. Is true happiness any part of your family view? So far from it, that none of your family but yourself could be happy were they not rich.

I have already stood the shock of 3 of this man's particular visits,& find it is impossible I should ever endure him. He has but a very ordinary share of understanding; is very illiterate;knows nothing but the value of estates,& how to improve them,& what belongs to land-jobbing & husbandry. Yet am I as one stupid, I think. They have begun so cruelly with me, that I have not spirit enough to assert my own negative.

“Indeed I have no delight, as I have often told you, equal to that which I take in conversing with you by letter, when I cannot in person.”

[...] I had not value enough for him to treat him with peculiarity, either by smiles or frowns. Indeed, he had cunning enough to give me, undesignedly, a piece of instruction which taught me this caution; for he had said in conversation once, "That if a man could not make a woman in courtship own herself pleased with him, it was as much and oftentimes more to his purpose to make her angry with him.”

A vain creature! too well knowing his advantages;yet those not what she had conceived them to be! Cool & warm by fits and starts; an ague-like lover. A steady man,a man of virtue,a man of morals, was worth a thousand of such gay flutterers. [...] but as for her, she would not have a man of whose heart she could not be sure for one moment; no, not for the world;& most sincerely glad was she that she had rejected him

Among the Wallachians one meets with the comeliest young women and the ugliest old hags. Knock at any door, and it is sure to be opened by one of these ancient dames.

a great difference between the Hungarian Unitarians & the English Puritans.The strict observance of SunD by the latter presents a marked contrast to the joy & freedom with which the day is celebrated by the former.HU gather in the evening for social intercourse,& join in the pleasures of the dance,to the music of a gipsy orchestra,until the ringing of the vesper bell.Taverns & pot-houses are unknown in the village

“I beg you, if you know aught ill of him, do not tell it me."

"You still love him?" asked the other, in compassion.

"He has killed me, he has done much that a man, an honourable man, ought not to do; and yet I cannot hate him. We may say, 'I loved you yesterday, to-morrow I shall hate you,' and we may act as if we meant it; but we cannot really feel it."

"My poor Anna!" was all Blanka could say.”