“Perfect happiness, even in memory, is not common.”

“To begin perfect happiness at the respective ages of 26 and 18 is to do pretty well”

“I wish, as well as everybody else, to be perfectly happy; but, like everybody else, it must be in my own way.”

“Anne could not immediately fall into a quotation again. The sweet scenes of autumn were for a while put by - unless some tender sonnet, fraught with the apt analogy of the declining year, with declining happiness, and the images of youth and hope, and spring, all gone together, blessed her memory.”

“You have no ambition, I well know. Your wishes are all moderate.''As moderate as those of the rest of the world, I believe. I wish as well as every body else to be perfectly happy, but like every body else it must be in my own way. Greatness will not make me so.”

“I abhor every common-place phrase by which wit is intended”

“She talked to her, listened to her, read to her; and the tranquillity of such evenings, her perfect security in such a tête-à-tête from any sound of unkindness, was unspeakably welcome to a mind which had seldom known a pause in its alarms or embarrassments.”