Page:The Adventures of David Simple (1904).djvu/14

 extracts, culled at haphazard and miscellaneous in subject, speak for themselves. Their insight into human nature, as her brother pointed out, is the more remarkable if we consider the narrowness of her experience.

"I never yet knew a man who did not hate the person who seemed not to have the same opinion of him as he had of himself; and, as that very seldom happens, I believe it is one of the chief causes of the malignity mankind have against one another."

"He reflected that the customs and manners of nations relate chiefly to ceremonies, and have nothing to do with the hearts of men."

"He took a new lodging every week, and always the first thing he did was to inquire of his landlady the reputation of all the neighbourhood: but he never could hear one good character from any of them; only every one separately gave very broad hints of their own goodness, and what pity it was they should be obliged to live amongst such a set of people."

"And there for some time I will leave him to his own private sufferings—lest it should be thought I am so ignorant of the world, as not to know the proper time of forsaking people."

"In short, from morning till night, they did nothing but quarrel; and there passed many curious dialogues between them, which I shall not here repeat: for, as I hope to be read by the polite world, I would avoid everything of which they can have no idea."

"For, if by taking pains to bridle his passions, he could gain no superiority over his companions, all his love of rectitude, as he calls it, would fall to the ground. So that his goodness, like cold fruits, is produced by the dung and nastiness which surround it."

"She spent some time in the deepest melancholy, and felt all the misery which attends a woman who has many things to wish, but knows not positively which she wishes most."

"If he had but sighed, and been miserable for the loss of her, she could have married her old man without any great reluctance: but the thought that he had left her first was insupportable!"

"He never once reflected on what is perhaps really the case, that to prevent a husband's surfeit or satiety in the matrimonial feast, a little acid is now and then very prudently thrown into the dish by the wife."