every vice might be forgiven in a man and in a son, though every virtue was expected from a woman, and especially from a daughter. - Anthony Trollope

It is a comfortable feeling to know that you stand on your own ground. Land is about the only thing that can't fly away.

Lady Linlithgow was worldly, stingy, ill-tempered, selfish, and mean. Lady Linlithgow would cheat a butcher out of a mutton-chop, or a cook out of a month’s wages, if she could do so with some slant of legal wind in her favour. She would tell any number of lies to carry a point in what she believed to be social success. It was said of her that she cheated at cards. In back-biting, no venomous old woman between Bond Street and Park Lane could beat her, — or, more wonderful still, no venomous old man at the clubs. But nevertheless she recognised certain duties,

He was not so anxious to prove himself right, as to be so.