[A] real kindness is so far beyond all compliment, that it never appears more than when there is least of t'other mingled with it. - Dorothy Osborne

'[T]is a sad thing when all one's happiness is only that the world does not know you are miserable.

The heat of the day is spent in reading or working, and about six or seven o’clock, I walk out into a common that lies hard by the house, where a great many young wenches keep sheep and cows and sit in the shade singing of ballads. [...] I talk to them, and find they want nothing to make them the happiest people in the world, but the knowledge that they are so.

I shall never be persuaded that marriage has a charm to raise love out of nothing, much less out of dislike.