We trust to novels to train us in the practice of great indignations and great generositie. - Henry James

Sometimes she went so far as to wish that she should find herself in a difficult position, so that she might have the pleasure of being as heroic as the occasion demanded.

I used to call her, in my stupidity — for want of anything better — a dove

She carried within herself a great fund of life, and her deepest enjoyment was to feel the continuity between the movement of her own heart and the agitations of the world. For this reason, she was fond of seeing great crowds, and large stretches of country, of reading about revolutions and wars, of looking at historical pictures — a class of efforts to which she had often gone so far as to forgive much bad painting for the sake of the subject.