I'll not listen to reason…Reason always means what someone else has got to say. - Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

Economy was always "elegant", and money-spending always "vulgar and ostentatious"; a sort of sour-grapeism, which made us very peaceful and satisfied.

Thinking more of others’ happiness than of her own was very fine; but did it not mean giving up her very individuality, quenching all the warm love, the true desires, that made her herself? Yet in this deadness lay her only comfort; so it seemed.

Trust a girl of sixteen for knowing well if she is pretty; concerning her plainness she may be ignorant.