“All places were now become irksome to her. She found it impossible to fly from infamy, unless she could at the same time fly from herself.”
Sarah Fielding
Submitted by Quonation |Category: Shame
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“Some fluctuating notions concerning repentance, virtue, honor, morality … hovered around Lady Dellwyn’s thoughts but were too wavering to bring her to any fixed determination. She became a constant attendant from one public place to another, where she met with many mortifications. But yet even these were not quite so dreadful to her as to retire and be subjected to her own company alone.”
Sarah Fielding
Submitted by Quonation |Category: Shame
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“Their virtues lived in their children. The family changed its persons but not its manners, and they continued a blessing to the world from generation to generation.”
Sarah Fielding
Submitted by Quonation |Category: Virtue
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“I endeavor not to conceal that I believe there is a great mixture of desire in the passion which is called love–or rather, without any far-fetched strain on words, it may be called the companion of love.”
Sarah Fielding
Submitted by Quonation |Category: Passion
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“If matrimony be really beneficial to society, the custom that … married women alone are allowed any claim to place, is as useful a piece of policy as ever was invented…. The ridicule fixed on the appellation of old maid hath, I doubt not, frightened a very large number into the bonds of wedlock.”
Sarah Fielding
Submitted by Quonation |Category: Marriage
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“Flattery in courtship is the highest insolence, for whilst it pretends to bestow on you more than you deserve, it is watching an opportunity to take from you what you really have.”
Sarah Fielding
Submitted by Quonation |Category: Marriage
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“For experience showed her that she had not, by marrying a man of a large fortune, obtained any great proportion of property which she could call her own or command at her pleasure.”
Sarah Fielding
Submitted by Quonation |Category: Marriage
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“If variety is capable of filling every hour of the married state with the highest joy, then might it be said that Lord and Lady Dellwyn were completely blessed, for every idea that had the power of raising pleasure in the bosom of the one, depressed that of the other with sorrow and affliction.”
Sarah Fielding
Submitted by Quonation |Category: Marriage
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“His lordship pronounced his assent to take to wife his destined prey (in the words “I will”), with a voice as audible as generally breaks forth from a mouth vacated by the inhabitants, its teeth.”
Sarah Fielding
Submitted by Quonation |Category: Marriage
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“There is yet another kind of matrimonial dialect (which naturally succeeds this of talking at each other), which may very properly be styled The Language Contradictory…. In the former, however plain the object of satire may be exhibited to the whole company, yet there always remains some little covering…. But in this last method, the defiance becomes more open and the impetuosity with which these contradictions are uttered (although the subjects of them are often of the most indifferent nature) evidently prove that they arise from passion.”
Sarah Fielding
Submitted by Quonation |Category: Marriage
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“And now behold the goddess seated on her throne … receiving the adulation of her worshipper…. An adulation, which translated into plain English means no more than an address of the following kind: “Madam, I like you (no matter whether from fortune, person, or any other motive) and it will conduce much to my pleasure and convenience if you will become my wife: that is, if you will bind yourself before God and man to obey my commands as long as I shall live. And should you after marriage be forgetful of your duty, you will then have given me a legal power of exacting as rigid a performance of it as I shall please.”
Sarah Fielding
Submitted by Quonation |Category: Marriage
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“When the white frock is laid aside, the bigger miss seats herself in public at a ball, expecting every moment to be chosen by some man for a partner for that evening. If she is balked, what galling disappointment doth she feel within! Her heart is ready to burst with envy at all those who are so happy as to be taken out…. The same expectation of being chosen out as a partner for life continues from miss of fifteen to miss of _____ … but the woman who is continually expecting great offers of marriage, which may never happen, knows not when to give up her expectations.”
Sarah Fielding
Submitted by Quonation |Category: Marriage
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“I believe no gentleman would like to have his family affairs neglected because his wife was filling her head with crotchets and pothooks, and who, because she understood a few scraps of Latin, valued that more than minding her needle or providing her husband’s dinner.”
Sarah Fielding
Submitted by Quonation |Category: Marriage
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“[F]or women, like tradesmen, draw in the injudicious to buy their goods by the high value they themselves set upon them…. They endeavor strongly to fix in the minds of their enamoratos their own high value, and then contrive as much as possible to make them believe that they have so many purchasers at hand that the goods–if they do not make haste–will all be gone.”
Sarah Fielding
Submitted by Quonation |Category: Marriage
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“I made him a low curtsy and thanked him for the honor he intended me, but told him I had no kind of ambition to be his upper servant…. I then asked him how many offices he had allotted for me to perform for those great advantages he had offered me, of suffering me to humor him in all his whims and to receive meat, drink, and lodging at his hands; but hoped he would allow me some small wages, that I might now and then recreate myself with my fellow servants.”
Sarah Fielding
Submitted by Quonation |Category: Marriage
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“I am none of those nonsensical fools that can whine and make romantic love–I leave that to younger brothers. Let my estate speak for me.”
Sarah Fielding
Submitted by Quonation |Category: Marriage
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“The loss of liberty which must attend being a wife was of all things the most horrible to my imagination.”
Sarah Fielding
Submitted by Quonation |Category: Marriage
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“The gentleman took three or four strides across the room, looked out of the window once or twice, and then turned to me with an awkward bow and an irresistible air (as I fancy he thought it), and made me the polite compliment of telling me that he supposed my father had informed me that they two were agreed on a bargain. I replied, I did not know my father was of any trade or had any goods to dispose of.”
Sarah Fielding
Submitted by Quonation |Category: Marriage
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“I often used to think myself in the case of the fox-hunter, who, when he had toiled and sweated all day in the chase as if some unheard-of blessing was to crown his success, finds at last all he has got by his labor is a stinking nauseous animal. But my condition was yet worse than his; for he leaves the loathsome wretch to be torn by his hounds, whilst I was obliged to fondle mine, and meanly pretend him to be the object of my love.”
Sarah Fielding
Submitted by Quonation |Category: Marriage
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“I had some short struggle in my mind whether I should resign my lover or my liberty, but this lasted not long. I found myself as free as air and could not bear the thought of putting myself in any man’s power for life only from a present capricious inclination.”
Sarah Fielding
Submitted by Quonation |Category: Marriage
