Sensible Girl Quotes

Don't mistake me, Treasure. I can offer you many things, but friendship ain't one of them. Now, for once in your life, be a sensible girl and run away.

Young men often laugh at the sensible girls whom they secretly respect, and affect to admire the silly ones whom they secretly despise, because earnestness, intelligence, and womanly dignity are not the fashion.

What we ask is to be human individuals, however peculiar and unexpected. It is no good saying: "You are a little girl and therefore you ought to like dolls"; if the answer is, "But I don't," there is no more to be said.

Some mornings, she’d wake and vow, Today, I will get it right. I won’t be such an awful mess of a girl. I won’t lose my temper or make unkind remarks. I won’t go too far with a joke and feel the room go quiet with disapproval. I’ll be good and kind and sensible and patient. The sort everyone loves. But by evening, her good intentions would have unraveled. She’d say the wrong thing or talk a little too loudly. She’d take a dare she shouldn’t, just to be noticed. Perhaps Mabel was right, and she was selfish. But what was the point of living so quietly you made no noise at all? “Oh, Evie, you’re too much,” people said, and it wasn’t complimentary. Yes, she was too much. She felt like too much inside all the time. So why wasn’t she ever enough?

Most insensible, corrupt, cheap, disrespectful young girls run after bad, rude, cocky, nonsensical boys, but a mature, educated, thoughtful, virtuos lady opts for a wise, well breed, experienced, humble, modest gentleman.

Good-humoured, unaffected girls, will not do for a man who has been used to sensible women. They are two distinct orders of being.

She's not my type,' Carter says. 'So what is your type?' 'Tall, skinny, black hair, blue eyes, freckly nose. Blue tinsel wig and snowflakes optional.' 'Skinny?' I squeal. 'Definitely. Pretending to be shy, sensible and stand-offish when really you're mad about me.' 'You sure about that?' 'No, but I'm hoping.

And I could liken you to a lot of things But I always come around 'Cause in the end I'm a sensible girl I know the fiction of the fix

She thought she was a sensible girl. But some kind of love had taken hold of her and refused to let her go, and it wasn't a happy, easy, joyful thing, it had her in a vice-like grip.

Don't tell anyone at the church this, but I think girls going out with girls is quite sensible. Imagine not having to do all the housework, and if you found a nice girl the same size you'd have double the wardrobe and you'd never have to shave your legs or clean whiskers out of the sink. I don't know why everyone doesn't do it. Not it's fine, provided you stay that way. It's the changing back to men that sends you mad.

But ever since I made the decision to drop a few pounds-way less easy than it sounds, by the way-I've become obsessed with my size and in so doing I've inadvertently allowed my inner critic to have a voice. And you know what? She's a bitch. Like now when I see my underpants in the laundry, I no longer think Soft! Cotton! Sensible! Instead I hear her say Damn, girl, these panties be huge.

For to be unaffected was all that a pretty girl could want to make her mind as captivating as her person.

Since Henry Miller's Tropic books, of course, it has become difficult to talk sensibly about girls' c*nts.

But I think you’ll see in this book a girl who does find herself, not by success in the music industry but by taking the opportunity to sensibly and truly lose her marbles. The thing being that after losing them, one finds them and plays the game better.

I see a girl caught in the remains of a holiday gone bad, with her flesh picked off day after day as the carcass dries out. The knife and fork are abviously middle-class sensibilities. The palm tree is a nice touch. A broken dream,perhaps? Plastic honeymoon, deserted island? Oh, If you put in a slice of pumpkin pie, it could be a desserted island! (Pg 64)

Cats don’t have dark sides. That’s all a shadow is—and though you might be prejudiced against the dark, you ought to remember that that’s where stars live, and the moon and raccoons and owls and fireflies and mushrooms and cats and enchantments and a rather lot of good, necessary things. Thieving, too, and conspiracies, sneaking, secrets, and desire so strong you might faint dead away with the punch of it. But your light side isn’t a perfectly pretty picture, either, I promise you. You couldn’t dream without the dark. You couldn’t rest. You couldn’t even meet a lover on a balcony by moonlight. And what would the world be worth without that? You need your dark side, because without it, you’re half gone. Cats, on the other hand, have a more sensible setup. We just have the one side, and it’s mostly the sneaking and sleeping side anyway. So the other Iago and I feel very companionable toward each other. Whereas I expect my drowsy mistress Above would loathe this version of herself, who is kind and quiet and lonely and rather dear, all the things the original is not. My love stands for both. This one pets me more; that one let me pounce on anything I wanted.

Halt?" he said diffidently. He heard a deep sigh from the short, slightly built man riding beside him. Mentally he kicked himself. I thought you must be coming down with some illness for a moment there," Halt said straight faced. "It must be two or three minutes since you've asked a question." Commited now, Horace continued. One of those girls," he began, and immediately felt the Ranger's eyes on him. "She was wearing a very short skirt." There was the slightest pause. Yes?" Halt prompted, not sure where this conversation was leading. Horace shrugged uncomfortably. The memory of the girl, and her shapely legs, was causing his cheeks to burn with embarrassment again. Well," he said uncertainly, "I just wondered if that was normal over, that's all." Halt considered the serious young face beside him. He cleared his throat several times. I believe that sometimes Gallican girls take jobs as couriers. he said. Couriers. They carry messages from one person to another. Or from one buisness to another, in towns and cities." Halt checked to see if Horace seemed to believe him so far. There seemed no reason to think otherwise, so he added: "Urgent messages." Urgent messages," Horace replied, still not seeing the connection. But he seemed inclined to believe what Halt was saying, so the older man continued. And I suppose for a really urgent message, one would have to run." Now he saw a glimmer of understanding in the boy's eyes. Horace nodded several times as he made the connection. So, the short skirts...they'd be to help them run more easily?" he suggested. Halt nodded in his turn. It would be more sensible for of dress than long skirts, if you wanted to do a lot of runnig." He shot a quick look at Horace to see if his gentle teasing was not being turned back on himself-to see if, in fact, the boy realized Halt was talking nosense and was simply leading him on. Horace's face, however, was open and believing. I suppose so," Horace replied finally, then added in a softer voice, "They certainly look a lot better that way too.

I lit my loneliness on fire like it was a cigarette. But I didn’t smoke it, because that would have required me to remove my gas mask. And what kind of sensible girl is going to be attracted to a guy out in public not wearing his gas mask?

A clever girl may pass through the phase of foolish miss on the way to sensible woman.

Blokes are different from girls," Sam informed her - still scowling. "We don't need to talk about every little thing. You don't hear me whining when I break a nail." Finley's own brows pulled together. "Do you ever think before you open your mouth?" "Did I offend your delicate sensibilities?" Sam asked sweetly.

This sensible, sensible girl. A girl who knew how to protect herself. Never a daredevil, never stunting without a safety mat, without spotters. A girl for whom instability was the ultimate enemy. Who’d never known divorce or slamming doors or slamming fists. A girl whose home was a peaceful sanctum, even the basement padded. A life that had to be made safe because of the risks she put her body through. She was the most dangerous thing in her own life. Her body, the only dangerous thing.

, then why do you always forget that I love you very much? I love you very much, so even though it’s indeed true that there are girls who are taller than you, slimmer than you, prettier than you, more clever, gentle and sensible than you in this world, but they are all none of my business.

Now, my dear little girl, you have come to an age when the inward life develops and when some people (and on the whole those who have most of a destiny) find that all is not a bed of roses. Among other things there will be waves of terrible sadness, which last sometimes for days; irritation, insensibility, etc., etc., which taken together form a melancholy. Now, painful as it is, this is sent to us for an enlightenment. It always passes off, and we learn about life from it, and we ought to learn a great many good things if we react on it right. (For instance, you learn how good a thing your home is, and your country, and your brothers, and you may learn to be more considerate of other people, who, you now learn, may have their inner weaknesses and sufferings, too.) Many persons take a kind of sickly delight in hugging it; and some sentimental ones may even be proud of it, as showing a fine sorrowful kind of sensibility. Such persons make a regular habit of the luxury of woe. That is the worst possible reaction on it. It is usually a sort of disease, when we get it strong, arising from the organism having generated some poison in the blood; and we mustn't submit to it an hour longer than we can help, but jump at every chance to attend to anything cheerful or comic or take part in anything active that will divert us from our mean, pining inward state of feeling. When it passes off, as I said, we know more than we did before. And we must try to make it last as short as time as possible. The worst of it often is that, while we are in it, we don't want to get out of it. We hate it, and yet we prefer staying in it—that is a part of the disease. If we find ourselves like that, we must make something ourselves to some hard work, make ourselves sweat, etc.; and that is the good way of reacting that makes of us a valuable character. The disease makes you think of yourself all the time; and the way out of it is to keep as busy as we can thinking of things and of other people—no matter what's the matter with our self.

I should hardly call her a lively girl—she is very earnest, very eager in all she does—sometimes talks a great deal and always with animation—but she is not often really merry.

This little girl needs to be raised properly—by a team of sensible Cantonese nannies, not interfering parents!

Her face was so lovely, that when, in the common want of praise, she was called a beautiful girl, truth was less violently outraged than usually happens.

(Golden Globe acceptance speech in the style of Jane Austen's letters): "Four A.M. Having just returned from an evening at the Golden Spheres, which despite the inconveniences of heat, noise and overcrowding, was not without its pleasures. Thankfully, there were no dogs and no children. The gowns were middling. There was a good deal of shouting and behavior verging on the profligate, however, people were very free with their compliments and I made several new acquaintances. Miss Lindsay Doran, of Mirage, wherever that might be, who is largely responsible for my presence here, an enchanting companion about whom too much good cannot be said. Mr. Ang Lee, of foreign extraction, who most unexpectedly apppeared to understand me better than I undersand myself. Mr. James Schamus, a copiously erudite gentleman, and Miss Kate Winslet, beautiful in both countenance and spirit. Mr. Pat Doyle, a composer and a Scot, who displayed the kind of wild behavior one has lernt to expect from that race. Mr. Mark Canton, an energetic person with a ready smile who, as I understand it, owes me a vast deal of money. Miss Lisa Henson -- a lovely girl, and Mr. Gareth Wigan -- a lovely boy. I attempted to converse with Mr. Sydney Pollack, but his charms and wisdom are so generally pleasing that it proved impossible to get within ten feet of him. The room was full of interesting activitiy until eleven P.M. when it emptied rather suddenly. The lateness of the hour is due therefore not to the dance, but to the waiting, in a long line for horseless vehicles of unconscionable size. The modern world has clearly done nothing for transport. P.S. Managed to avoid the hoyden Emily Tomkins who has purloined my creation and added things of her own. Nefarious creature." "With gratitude and apologies to Miss Austen, thank you.

This might surprise you, but here's a fact: people who plan things thoroughly aren't particularly connected with reality. It seems like they are, but they're not: they're focusing on making things bite-size, instead of having to look at the whole picture. It's procrastination in its purest form because it convinces everyone—including the person who's doing it—that they are very sensible and in touch with reality when they're not. They're obsessed with cutting it up into little pieces so they can pretend it's not there at all.

A sensible girl would not have been crying, grieving for the boy with the magic in his voice and the blues in his eyes, mourning the loss of something that was a lie-a lie-from beginning to end.

Aside from helping people with their homework, or anything else they needed, she really didn't know how to meet people. She didn't feel like she was a shy person. She thought of herself as a take-charge sort of girl. And yet, somehow, if there wasn't some request along the lines of "I can't remember how to do long division" then it was just too awkward to go up to someone and say... what? She'd never been able to figure out what. And there didn't seem to be a standard information sheet, which was ridiculous. The whole business of meeting people had never seemed sensible to her. Why did she have to take all the responsibility herself when there were two people involved? Why didn't adults ever help? She wished some other girl would just walk up to her and say, "Hermione, the teacher told me to be friends with you".

Waller was a sensible girl. She meant to shake off the American officer as soon as she could, and meet with Agent Werewolf and his friends in the woods. Germany was counting on them! Still, it seemed foolish to be afraid -- the American officer was only a woman, after all. What could one woman do to another?

Oil and Water, Daddy calls us. At four years younger than me, Katie is only fourteen and she already has half the boys in town eating from her pretty little hand. She tells me I am too tall and too wicked looking to capture the heart of any sensible young man.

You are too sensible a girl to fall in love merely because you are warned against it.

For everyone knows that a girl cannot live on chicken cordon blue alone.

Goodness,” said an exhausted Lady Maccon, “are babies customarily that repulsive looking?” Madame Lefoux pursed her lips and turned the infant about, as though she hadn’t quite looked closely before. “I assure you, the appearance improves with time.” Alexia held out her arms—her dress was already ruined anyway—and received the pink wriggling thing into her embrace. She smiled up at her husband. “I told you it would be a girl.” “Why isna she crying?” complained Lord Maccon. “Shouldna she be crying? Aren’t all bairns supposed to cry?” “Perhaps she’s mute,” suggested Alexia. “Be a sensible thing with parents like us.” Lord Maccon looked properly horrified at the idea.

Mrs. Jennings wrote to tell the wonderful tale, to vent her honest indignation against the jilting girl, and pour forth her compassion towards poor Mr. Edward, who, she was sure, had quite doted upon the worthless hussy...

A single woman, with a very narrow income, must be a ridiculous, disagreeable old maid! The proper sport of boys and girls, but a single woman, of good fortune, is always respectable, and may be as sensible and pleasant as any body else.

Do you think Meg cares for him?" asked Mrs. March, with an anxious look. "Mercy me! I don't know anything about love and such nonsense!" cried Jo, with a funny mixture of interest and contempt. "In novels, the girls show it by starting and blushing, fainting away, growing thin, and acting like fools. Now Meg does not do anything of the sort. She eats and drinks and sleeps like a sensible creature.

At twenty-five, girls begin to talk about being old maids, but secretly resolve that they never will be. At thirty they say nothing about it, but quietly accept the fact, and if sensible, console themselves by remembering that they have twenty more useful, happy years, in which they may be learning to grow old gracefully.

In Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand stated that there's no such thing as real altruism. She espoused the principle of ethical egotism, meaning that a person's moral obligation is to promote their own welfare. Translation? I still have the musical sensibilities of a teenage girl and I kind of want to see a shitty pop concert in the guise of doing something nice for my pal's kid, so I need to find a way to make it happen.

...Ever since I made the decision to drop a few pounds—way less easy than it sounds, by the way—I’ve become obsessed with my size, and in so doing I’ve inadvertently allowed my inner critic to have a voice. And you know what? She’s a bitch. Like now when I see my underpants in the laundry, I no longer think Soft! Cotton! Sensible! Instead I hear her say Damn, girl, these panties be huge.” “Your inner critic has terrible grammar.” “I know, it’s the only way I can take away some of her power over me...

Men, she decided, were a strange, thick-skulled, ball-kicking species no one on earth could have a sensible conversation with.

It was enough to secure his good opinion, for to be unaffected was all that a pretty girl could want to make her mind as captivating as her person.

The sensible girl deserted me. All of a sudden I was only myself, just a stupid child, almost nothing at all. ‘What shall I do?’ I whispered.

I look upon the finest logical demonstration the way a sensible girl regards a love letter.

Sensible girls for whom I do care whole papers of pins won’t let me send them ‘flowers and things,’ so what can I do? My feelings must have a ‘went.

Pity me, and pardon me, O virtuous reader! You never knew what it is to be a slave; to be entirely unprotected by law or custom; to have the laws reduce you to the condition of a chattel, entirely subject to the will of another. You never exhausted your ingenuity in avoiding the snares, and eluding the power of a hated tyrant; you never shuddered at the sound of his footsteps, and trembled within hearing of his voice. I know I did wrong. No one can feel it more sensibly than I do. The painful and humiliating memory will haunt me to my dying day. Still, in looking back, calmly, on the events of my life, I feel that the slave woman ought not to be judged by the same standard as others.

In their world good manners and good sense prevail. They don’t imagine that to choose sensibly is to set a time-bomb under yourself. They don’t imagine you are ripe for the cutting, waiting for your chance at life. They don’t think of the wreckage an exploding life will cause… Settle down, feet under the table. She’s a nice girl, he’s a nice boy. It’s the clichés that cause the trouble.

Women, for their part, are always complaining that we raise them only to be vain and coquettish, that we keep them amused with trifles so that we may more easily remain their masters; they blame us for the faults we attribute to them. What stupidity! And since when is it men who concern themselves with the education of girls? Who is preventing the mothers from raising them as they please? There are no schools for girls—what a tragedy! Would God, there were none for boys! They would be raised more sensibly and more straightforwardly. Is anyone forcing your daughters to waste their time on foolish trifles? Are they forced against their will to spend half their lives on their appearance, following your example? Are you prevented from instructing them, or having them instructed according to your wishes? Is it our fault if they please us when they are beautiful, if their airs and graces seduce us, if the art they learn from you attracts and flatters us, if we like to see them tastefully attired, if we let them display at leisure the weapons with which they subjugate us? Well then, decide to raise them like men; the men will gladly agree; the more women want to resemble them, the less women will govern them, and then men will truly be the masters.

And even though she could feel the sensible and rational parts of herself rallying in her head, she knew that a small sliver of Pip had already made the decision. That flake of recklessness inside contaminating all other thoughts.

Margaret, the other sister, was a good-humored, well-disposed girl; but as she had already imbibed a good deal of Marianne's romance, without having much of her sense, she did not, at thirteen, bid fair to equal her sisters at a more advanced period of life.

it becomes probable that the so-called immaterial hysterical affection and hypochondriacal disease derive from the dispositions of the particular state of the fibers.” It is to this sensibility, this mobility, that we must attribute the sufferings, the spasms, the singular pains so readily suffered by “young girls of pale complexion, and individuals too much given to study and meditation.

Each girl has to read her story out loud then we talk it over. We are going to keep them all sacredly and have them to read to our descendants. We each write under a nom do plume. Mine is Rosamond Montmorency. All the girls do pretty well. Ruby Gillis is rather sentimental. She puts too much lovemaking into her stories and you know too much is worse than too little. Jane never puts any because she says it makes her feel so silly when she has to read it out loud. Jane’s stories are extremely sensible. Then Diana puts too many murders into hers. She says most of the time she doesn’t know what to do with the people so she kills them off to get rid of them.

Mum said no one has ever called me by my first name so I've always assumed that even as a baby they could tell I wasn't an Arabella, a name with loops and flourishes in black-inked calligraphy; a name that contains within it girls called Bella or Bells or Belle - so many beautiful possibilities. No, from the start I was clearly a Beatrice, sensible and unembellished in Times New Roman, with no one hiding inside.

Well it seems to me that there are books that tell stories, and then there are books that tell truths...," I began. "Go on," she said "The first kind, they show you life like you want it to be. With villains getting what they deserve and the hero seeing what a fool he's been and marrying the heroine and happy ending and all that. Like Sense and Sensibility or Persuasion. But the second kind, they show you life more like it is. Like in Huckleberry Finn where Huck's pa is a no-good drunk and Jim suffers so. The first kind makes you cheerful and contented, but the second kind shakes you up." "People like happy ending, Mattie. They don't want to be shaken up." "I guess not, ma'am. It's just that there are no Captain Wentworths, are there? But there are plenty of Pap Finns. And things go well for Anne Elliot in the end, but they don't go well for most people." My voice trembled as I spoke, as it did whenever I was angry. "I feel let down sometimes. The people in the books-the heroes- they're always so...heroic. And I try to be, but..." "...you're not," Lou said, licking deviled ham off her fingers. "...no, I'm not. People in books are good and noble and unselfish, and people aren't that way... and I feel, well... hornswoggled sometimes. By Jane Austen and Charles Dickens and Louisa May Alcott. Why do writers make things sugary when life isn't that way?" I asked too loudly. "Why don't they tell the truth? Why don't they tell how a pigpen looks after the sow's eaten her children? Or how it is for a girl when her baby won't come out? Or that cancer has a smell to it? All those books, Miss Wilcox," I said, pointing at a pile of them," and I bet not one of them will tell you what cancer smells like. I can, though. It stinks. Like meat gone bad and dirty clothes and bog water all mixed together. Why doesn't anyone tell you that?" No one spoke for a few seconds. I could hear the clock ticking and the sound of my own breathing. Then Lou quietly said, "Cripes, Mattie. You oughtn't to talk like that." I realized then that Miss Wilcox had stopped smiling. Her eyes were fixed om me, and I was certain she'd decided I was morbid and dispiriting like Miss Parrish had said and that I should leave then and there. "I'm sorry, Miss Wilcox," I said, looking at the floor. "I don't mean to be coarse. I just... I don't know why I should care what happens to people in a drawing room in London or Paris or anywhere else when no one in those places cares what happens to people in Eagle Bay." Miss Wilcox's eyes were still fixed on me, only now they were shiny. Like they were the day I got my letter from Barnard. "Make them care, Mattie," she said softly. "And don't you ever be sorry.

I’m glad of it, that’s one of your foolish extravagances, sending flowers and things to girls for whom you don’t care two pins,” continued Jo reprovingly. “Sensible girls for whom I do care whole papers of pins won’t let me send them ‘flowers and things’, so what can I do? My feelings need a ‘vent’.

What are you saying?” “I want to try.” He wanted clarification on that. “You want to try what?” There it was, that deep flush. “You know.” Yes, he knew, but he wasn’t going to let her off the hook so easily. She was going to be his. For a brief time, she would belong to him and he would have everything he wanted, and he wanted her to start talking dirty. Yes. He wanted to teach her, to train her to accept pleasure so she would expect it. “No, I don’t know. You’ll have to be plain.” Avery blushed a little. “I want to be intimate with you.” So sweet. So polite. So not happening. “That sounds like you want me to get into my pajamas and exchange secrets with you. I’m not your girlfriend, Avery. Tell me what you want. That’s lesson number one. Communication and honesty are the keys to the relationship I want. I need to hear you say plainly what you want.” She hesitated, but only for a moment. He wasn’t surprised. Deep in her heart, she was a brave girl. She’d faced so much and still was open with her heart. Damn, but he didn’t understand that. “I would like for us to sleep together.” “I’m not very sleepy.” He wasn’t going to let her get away with anything. She groaned a little in obvious frustration. “You know that’s not what I’m talking about.” “Yes. I do. So say what you want.” “I want to have sex.” “So clinical. I’ll have to think about that.” “I want to make love.” “Sweet, but not what I’m looking for.” Her face crinkled into the cutest pout. “Damn it, Lee. I want to fuck.” Just like that he was primed and ready. She’d said fuck with such a sweet little heat, her eyebrows forming a V over her face as though the entire incident had offended her polite sensibilities. She would learn there wasn’t room for politeness between them. He growled just a little. “I want to fuck, too, baby. I want to fuck all night long.

But he liked it because it was so different from the coquettish clatter of most of the girls with whom he talked. Young men often laugh at the sensible girls whom they secretly respect, and affect to admire the silly ones whom they secretly despise because earnestness, intelligence, and womanly dignity are not the fashion.

When a young man, be who he will, comes and makes love to a pretty girl, and promises marriage, he has no business to fly off from his word only because he grows poor, and a richer girl is ready to have him. Why don't he, in such a case, sell his horses, let his house, turn off his servants, and make a thorough reform at once?

Some of the girls in the factory say that I have ice water in my veins. That I don't have feelings. That there's a calculator where my heart ought to be. A calculator! I shit on them. Por Dios! I consider myself practical, sensible, and realistic. That's the way I am, and if you don't like it, don't come around. Don't come crying to me.

It is foolish to wish for beauty.  Sensible people never either desire it for themselves or care about it in others.  If the mind be but well cultivated, and the heart well disposed, no one ever cares for the exterior.  So said the teachers of our childhood; and so say we to the children of the present day.  All very judicious and proper, no doubt; but are such assertions supported by actual experience? We are naturally disposed to love what gives us pleasure, and what more pleasing than a beautiful face—when we know no harm of the possessor at least?  A little girl loves her bird—Why?  Because it lives and feels; because it is helpless and harmless?  A toad, likewise, lives and feels, and is equally helpless and harmless; but though she would not hurt a toad, she cannot love it like the bird, with its graceful form, soft feathers, and bright, speaking eyes.  If a woman is fair and amiable, she is praised for both qualities, but especially the former, by the bulk of mankind: if, on the other hand, she is disagreeable in person and character, her plainness is commonly inveighed against as her greatest crime, because, to common observers, it gives the greatest offence; while, if she is plain and good, provided she is a person of retired manners and secluded life, no one ever knows of her goodness, except her immediate connections.  Others, on the contrary, are disposed to form unfavourable opinions of her mind, and disposition, if it be but to excuse themselves for their instinctive dislike of one so unfavoured by nature; and visa versa with her whose angel form conceals a vicious heart, or sheds a false, deceitful charm over defects and foibles that would not be tolerated in another. 

There are no colleges for girls; so much the better for them! Would God there were none for the boys, their education would be more sensible and more wholesome.

Her face was so lovely, that when in the common cant of praise she was called a beautiful girl, truth was less violently outraged than usually happens.

You'd be a silly girl not to accept a reward." "I'd be a sensible young woman to refuse one," said Tiffany

Yes,” said Mr. Darcy, “I know what you thought, nonsensical girl! As though any sensible man could fall out of love with you, even if he wished to.

How we would like to argue with September, and tell her that in the waiting lies the pleasure! That we here in the world of sensible folk know how to wait without twisted-up bellies and tapping feet and wishing for the sun to hurry up and rise and set. That a clever person is never bored, and a bored person is never clever. But though I am sly, I am a trickster, I am even cruel—I cannot lie.

I see you go bare-shod. This is most likely extremely sensible. Shoes are no end of trouble for girls. . . . How many have danced to death in slippers of silk and glass and fur and wood? Too many to count—the graveyards, they are so full these days. You are very wise to let your soles become grubby with mud, to let them grow their own slippers of moss and clay and calluses. This is far preferable to shoes which may become wicked at any moment.

Chesnel was clear-sighted so long as Victurnien was not there before him. One by one he lost the illusions which the Marquis and his sister still fondly cherished. He saw that the young fellow could not be depended upon in the least, and wished to see him married to some modest, sensible girl of good birth, wondering within himself how a young man could mean so well and do so ill, for he made promises one day only to break them all on the next.

The Cheerful Fairy was quite short and plump in a tweed skirt and shoes so sensible they could do their own tax returns, and was pretty much like the first teacher you get at school, the one who has special training in dealing with nervous incontinence and little boys whose contribution to the wonderful world of sharing consists largely of hitting a small girl repeatedly over the head with a wooden horse. In fact, this picture was helped by the whistle on a string around her neck and a general impression that at any moment she would clap her hands. The tiny gauzy wings just visible on her back were probably just for show, but the wizards kept on staring at her shoulder.

I love you, Reynard Boulton," she said, gazing into his eyes. "I promise to love you with all my heart and to stay by you and encourage and strengthen you... to be truthful and faithful and kind to you, to always think the best of you... and to share my hopes and decisions and joys with you, in good times and in bad. I will be your compass, your helpmate, your defender, and the keeper of your heart. I will love you as long as there is breath in my body... and beyond even that.

Sir John's confidence in his own judgment rose with this animated praise, and he set off directly for the cottage to tell the Miss Dashwoods of the Miss Steeles' arrival, and to assure them of their being the sweetest girls in the world. From such commendation as this, however, there was not much to be learned; Elinor well knew that the sweetest girls in the world were to be met with in every part of England, under every possible variation of form, face, temper and understanding.

The contents of this letter threw Elizabeth into a flutter of spirits in which it was difficult to determine whether pleasure or pain bore the greatest share. The vague and unsettled suspicions which uncertainty had produced of what Mr. Darcy might have been doing to forward her sister's match which she had feared to encourage as an exertion of goodness too great to be probable and at the same time dreaded to be just from the pain of obligation were proved beyond their greatest extent to be true He had followed them purposely to town he had taken on himself all the trouble and mortification attendant on such a research in which supplication had been necessary to a woman whom he must abominate and despise and where he was reduced to meet frequently meet reason with persuade and finally bribe the man whom he always most wished to avoid and whose very name it was punishment to him to pronounce. He had done all this for a girl whom he could neither regard nor esteem. Her heart did whisper that he had done it for her. But it was a hope shortly checked by other considerations and she soon felt that even her vanity was insufficient when required to depend on his affection for her—for a woman who had already refused him—as able to overcome a sentiment so natural as abhorrence against relationship with Wickham. Brother-in-law of Wickham Every kind of pride must revolt from the connection. He had to be sure done much. She was ashamed to think how much. But he had given a reason for his interference which asked no extraordinary stretch of belief. It was reasonable that he should feel he had been wrong he had liberality and he had the means of exercising it and though she would not place herself as his principal inducement she could perhaps believe that remaining partiality for her might assist his endeavours in a cause where her peace of mind must be materially concerned. It was painful exceedingly painful to know that they were under obligations to a person who could never receive a return. They owed the restoration of Lydia her character every thing to him. Oh how heartily did she grieve over every ungracious sensation she had ever encouraged every saucy speech she had ever directed towards him. For herself she was humbled but she was proud of him. Proud that in a cause of compassion and honour he had been able to get the better of himself. She read over her aunt's commendation of him again and again. It was hardly enough but it pleased her. She was even sensible of some pleasure though mixed with regret on finding how steadfastly both she and her uncle had been persuaded that affection and confidence subsisted between Mr. Darcy and herself.

people who plan things thoroughly aren’t particularly connected with reality. It seems like they are, but they’re not: they’re focusing on making things bite-size, instead of having to look at the whole picture. It’s procrastination in its purest form because it convinces everyone—including the person who’s doing it—that they are very sensible and in touch with reality when they’re not. They’re obsessed with cutting it up into little pieces so they can pretend that it’s not there at all.

Art and science are both creative processes about using the tools at hand, being struck with bright ideas, and getting your hands dirty. By living as a “scientist,” I saw how adding an “artist” sensibility to science and vice versa lifted them both.

And here is my sweet little Annamaria,’ she added, tenderly caressing a little girl of three years old, who had not made a noise for the last two minutes; ‘And she is always so gentle and quiet—Never was there such a quiet little thing!’ But unfortunately in bestowing these embraces, a pin in her ladyship’s head dress slightly scratching the child’s neck, produced from this pattern of gentleness such violent screams, as could hardly be outdone by any creature professedly noisy. The mother’s consternation was excessive; but it could not surpass the alarm of the Miss Steeles, and every thing was done by all three, in so critical an emergency, which affection could suggest as likely to assuage the agonies of the little sufferer. She was seated in her mother’s lap, covered with kisses, her wound bathed with lavender-water, by one of the Miss Steeles, who was on her knees to attend her, and her mouth stuffed with sugar plums by the other. With such a reward for her tears, the child was too wise to cease crying.

The old gentleman died: his will was read, and like almost every other will, gave as much disappointment as pleasure. He was neither so unjust, nor so ungrateful, as to leave his estate from his nephew;—but he left it to him on such terms as destroyed half the value of the bequest. Mr. Dashwood had wished for it more for the sake of his wife and daughters than for himself or his son;—but to his son, and his son's son, a child of four years old, it was secured, in such a way, as to leave to himself no power of providing for those who were most dear to him, and who most needed a provision by any charge on the estate, or by any sale of its valuable woods. The whole was tied up for the benefit of this child, who, in occasional visits with his father and mother at Norland, had so far gained on the affections of his uncle, by such attractions as are by no means unusual in children of two or three years old; an imperfect articulation, an earnest desire of having his own way, many cunning tricks, and a great deal of noise, as to outweigh all the value of all the attention which, for years, he had received from his niece and her daughters. He meant not to be unkind, however, and, as a mark of his affection for the three girls, he left them a thousand pounds a-piece.

Margaret, the other sister, was a good-humoured, well-disposed girl; but as she had already imbibed a good deal of Marianne’s romance, without having much of her sense, she did not, at thirteen, bid fair to equal her sisters at a more advanced period of life.

Once upon a time, there were four girls, who had enough to eat and drink and wear, a good many comforts and pleasures, kind friends and parents who loved them dearly, and yet they were not contented." (Here the listeners stole sly looks at one another, and began to sew diligently.) "These girls were anxious to be good and made many excellent resolutions, but they did not keep them very well, and were constantly saying, 'If only we had this,' or 'If we could only do that,' quite forgetting how much they already had, and how many things they actually could do. So they asked an old woman what spell they could use to make them happy, and she said, 'When you feel discontented, think over your blessings, and be grateful.'" (Here Jo looked up quickly, as if about to speak, but changed her mind, seeing that the story was not done yet.) "Being sensible girls, they decided to try her advice, and soon were surprised to see how well off they were. One discovered that money couldn't keep shame and sorrow out of rich people's houses, another that, though she was poor, she was a great deal happier, with her youth, health, and good spirits, than a certain fretful, feeble old lady who couldn't enjoy her comforts, a third that, disagreeable as it was to help get dinner, it was harder still to go begging for it and the fourth, that even carnelian rings were not so valuable as good behavior. So they agreed to stop complaining, to enjoy the blessings already possessed, and try to deserve them, lest they should be taken away entirely, instead of increased, and I believe they were never disappointed or sorry that they took the old woman's advice.

But I don't know, Wesley. This thing makes me think, too. S'pose we'd got Elnora when she was a baby, and we'd heaped on her all the love we can't on our own, and we'd coddled, petted, and shielded her, would she have made the woman that living alone, learning to think for herself, and taking all the knocks Kate Comstock could give, have made of her?" "You bet your life!" cried Wesley, warmly. "Loving anybody don't hurt them. We wouldn't have done anything but love her. You can't hurt a child loving it. She'd have learned to work, be sensible, study, and grown into a woman with us, without suffering like a poor homeless dog." "But you don't get the point, Wesley. She would have grown into a fine woman with us; just seems as if Elnora was born to be fine, but as we would have raised her, would her heart ever have known the world as it does now? Where's the anguish, Wesley, that child can't comprehend? Seeing what she's seen of her mother hasn't hardened her. She can understand any mother's sorrow. Living life from the rough side has only broadened her. Where's the girl or boy burning with shame, or struggling to find a way, that will cross Elnora's path and not get a lift from her? She's had the knocks, but there'll never be any of the thing you call 'false pride' in her. I guess we better keep out. Maybe Kate Comstock knows what she's doing. Sure as you live, Elnora has grown bigger on knocks than she would on love.

It seldom is, at first, and thirty seems the end of all things to five-and-twenty. But it's not as bad as it looks, and one can get on quite happily if one has something in one's self to fall back upon. At twenty-five, girls begin to talk about being old maids, but secretly resolve that they never will be. At thirty they say nothing about it, but quietly accept the fact, and if sensible, console themselves by remembering that they have twenty more useful, happy years, in which they may be learning to grow old gracefully. Don't laugh at the spinsters, dear girls, for often very tender, tragic romances are hidden away in the hearts that beat so quietly under the sober gowns, and many silent sacrifices of youth, health, ambition, love itself, make the faded faces beautiful in God's sight. Even the sad, sour sisters should be kindly dealt with, because they have missed the sweetest part of life, if for no other reason. And looking at them with compassion, not contempt, girls in their bloom should remember that they too may miss the blossom time. That rosy cheeks don't last forever, that silver threads will come in the bonnie brown hair, and

A chain of follies had put him there: Call’s abrupt decision to become a cattleman and his own decision, equally abrupt, to try and rescue a girl foolish enough to be taken in by Jake Spoon. None of it was sensible, yet he had to admit there was something about such follies that he liked.

But the world had gone mad, in his opinion. Lies and stupidity were more widespread than ever before. Demagogues and psychopaths dominated the political scene, and prejudice and intolerance were poisoning everything, sometimes even penetrating the discussions within his own, otherwise sensible team.

Yesterday – sensible, clear-headed, right-thinking – I decided I must accept that my part in this story was over. But my better angels lost again, defeated by drink, by the person I am when I drink. Drunk Rachel sees no consequences, she is either excessively expansive and optimistic or wrapped up in hate.

As a writer, I prided myself on seeing and describing the world as it was, not as I wanted it or thought it was supposed to be. I had made my living writing hard-boiled fiction about tough, cynical men and femmes fatales swept up in ugly underworlds of crime, sex, and murder. Would I suddenly be reduced to penning saccharine fluff about some little girl who lost her pet bunny but Jesus brought it back again? “Oh, God,” I prayed fervently more than once, “whatever happens, don’t let me become a Christian novelist!” Even that prospect, terrible as it was, was only a part of the greater danger. If I became a Christian, would I lose my freedom of thought? Would I sacrifice my ability to question every proposition and examine every belief to the bone? Would I lose my realism and my tragic sensibility? Would I descend into that smiley-faced religious idiocy that mistakes the good health and prosperity of the moment for the supernatural favor of God?

I shall not be a poor old maid; and it is poverty only which makes celibacy contemptible to a generous public! A single woman with a very narrow income must be a ridiculous, disagreeable old maid! the proper sport of boys and girls; but a single woman of good fortune is always respectable, and may be as sensible and pleasant as any body else!

I received her sewing kit and pins and brooches; a blank diary purchased especially for me; "Advice to a Young Married Woman", by a minister, which she asked me not to read till I was older----; "Exemplary Letters for Sundry Occasions"; "The Whole Duty of Woman"; and some volumes of Walter Scott's novels, which I might enjoy when my reading had improved. With a glance at Rev. Fowler, whose advice she had sought in this matter, she said that, for a sensible girl such as she knew me to be, novels by respectable authors could provide harmless amusement, but I must remember not to neglect my duties for them, not to demand that my life be a romance, or over strain myself with too much reading.

Those who live in retirement, whose lives have fallen amid the seclusion of schools or of other walled-in and guarded dwellings, are liable to be suddenly and for a long while dropped out of the memory of their friends, the denizens of a freer world. Unaccountably, perhaps, and close upon some space of unusually frequent intercourse—some congeries of rather exciting little circumstances, whose natural sequel would rather seem to be the quickening than the suspension of communication—there falls a stilly pause, a wordless silence, a long blank of oblivion. Unbroken always is this blank; alike entire and unexplained. The letter, the message once frequent, are cut off; the visit, formerly periodical, ceases to occur; the book, paper, or other token that indicated remembrance, comes no more. Always there are excellent reasons for these lapses, if the hermit but knew them. Though he is stagnant in his cell, his connections without are whirling in the very vortex of life. That void interval which passes for him so slowly that the very clocks seem at a stand, and the wingless hours plod by in the likeness of tired tramps prone to rest at milestones—that same interval, perhaps, teems with events, and pants with hurry for his friends. The hermit—if he be a sensible hermit—will swallow his own thoughts, and lock up his own emotions during these weeks of inward winter. He will know that Destiny designed him to imitate, on occasion, the dormouse, and he will be conformable: make a tidy ball of himself, creep into a hole of life's wall, and submit decently to the drift which blows in and soon blocks him up, preserving him in ice for the season. Let him say, "It is quite right: it ought to be so, since so it is." And, perhaps, one day his snow-sepulchre will open, spring's softness will return, the sun and south-wind will reach him; the budding of hedges, and carolling of birds and singing of liberated streams will call him to kindly resurrection. Perhaps this may be the case, perhaps not: the frost may get into his heart and never thaw more; when spring comes, a crow or a pie may pick out of the wall only his dormouse-bones. Well, even in that case, all will be right: it is to be supposed he knew from the first he was mortal, and must one day go the way of all flesh, As well soon as syne.

I turned around to examine the rest of my temporary prison, and saw an enormous golden eye staring at me, less than ten feet away from where I stood. I did what any sensible witch would do in my circumstance. I screamed like a scared little girl. The eye blinked. Once, twice, and then shifted as the dragon turned its head toward me, regarding me with both golden eyes. “I could have eaten you, you know.” I nodded numbly and stammered, “Thank you for not doing that.” I knew dragons existed in Faerie, though I’d never seen one before. Dragons are reclusive as a rule and tend to guard their privacy ferociously, so only the overly brave or overly stupid seek them out on purpose. The creature was huge, taking up a good portion of the room with its bulk. Black scales covered its body, and leathery wings were folded against its back. Smoke puffed out of its nostrils for a moment, and my stomach leapt in panic. “I only eat virgins though.” I stared at the dragon in disbelief, feeling the inexplicable urge to defend my past sexual history. My mouth worked as I struggled to find an appropriate response, and I thought I saw a glint of humor in its golden gaze.

It is foolish to wish for beauty. Sensible people never either desire it for themselves or care about it in others. If the mind be but well cultivated, and the heart well disposed, no one ever cares for the exterior. So said the teachers of our childhood; and so say we to the children of the present day. All very judicious and proper, no doubt; but are such assertions supported by actual experience? We are naturally disposed to love what gives us pleasure, and what more pleasing than a beautiful face--when we know no harm of the possessor at least? A little girl loves her bird--Why? Because it lives and feels; because it is helpless and harmless? A toad, likewise, lives and feels, and is equally helpless and harmless; but though she would not hurt a toad, she cannot love it like the bird, with its graceful form, soft feathers, and bright, speaking eyes. If a woman is fair and amiable, she is praised for both qualities, but especially the former, by the bulk of mankind: if, on the other hand, she is disagreeable in person and character, her plainness is commonly inveighed against as her greatest crime, because, to common observers, it gives the greatest offence; while, if she is plain and good, provided she is a person of retired manners and secluded life, no one ever knows of her goodness, except her immediate connections. Others, on the contrary, are disposed to form unfavourable opinions of her mind, and disposition, if it be but to excuse themselves for their instinctive dislike of one so unfavoured by nature; and visa versa with her whose angel form conceals a vicious heart, or sheds a false, deceitful charm over defects and foibles that would not be tolerated in another. They that have beauty, let them be thankful for it, and make a good use of it, like any other talent; they that have it not, let them console themselves, and do the best they can without it: certainly, though liable to be over-estimated, it is a gift of God, and not to be despised.

Men may profess their yearning to find a modest and sensible girl to marry. But none of you can resist chasing after a golden-haired flirt with a well-endowed figure, all dimples and giggles- without giving a passing thought to how empty-headed she might be." "Guilty as charged," one of the men admitted, and they all chuckled. "She's not empty-headed," Tom said, unable to keep silent. Adelia gave him a piercing glance, her smile firmly fixed. "I forgot- you're acquainted with the family. Don't say Lady Cassandra is a secret intellectual? An unacknowledged genius of our modern times?" Another round of chuckles, this time more subdued. "She's highly intelligent," Tom replied coolly, "and quick-witted. She's also extraordinarily kind. I've never heard her speak ill of anyone." Adelia flushed at the subtle rebuke.

The noise of the town some floors below was greatly muted. In a state of complete mental detachment, he went over the events, the circumstances and the stages of destruction in their lives. Seen in the frozen light of a restrictive past, everything seemed clear, conclusive and indisputable. Now it seemed unthinkable that a girl of seventeen shoudl be so naive; it was particularly unbelieveable that a girl of seventeen should set so much store by love. If the surveys in the magazines were to be believed, things had changed a great deal in the twenty-five years since Annabelle was a teenager. Young girls today were more sensible, more sophisticated. Nowadays they worried more about their exam results and did their best to ensure they would have a decent career. For them, going out with boys was simply a game, a distraction motivated as much by narcissism as by sexual pleasure. They later would try to make a good marriage, basing their decision on a range of social and professional criteria, as well as on shared interests and tastes. Of course, in doing this they cut themselves off from any possibility of happiness--a condition indissociable from the outdated, intensely close bonds so incompatible with the exercise of reason--but this was their attempt to escape the moral and emotional suffering which had so tortured their forebears. This hope was, unfortunately, rapidly disappointed; the passing of love's torments simply left the field clear for boredom, emptiness and an anguished wait for old age and death. The second part of Annabelle's life therefore had been much more dismal and sad than the first, of which, in the end, she had no memory at all.

Hey, she was his fantasy girl. She was supposed to act in an appropriate fantasy-like manner. She wasn’t supposed to look at him as though he was all her nightmares rolled up into one big pile of dog crap that she couldn’t wait to scrape off her sensible shoes. And that was only after she’d finally recognized him—which had taken far longer than it should have done considering they’d had hot, mind-blowing sex every night for a year...In his dreams.

Yesterday—sensible, clearheaded, right-thinking—I decided I must accept that my part in this story was over. But my better angels lost again, defeated by drink, by the person I am when I drink. Drunk Rachel sees no consequences, she is either excessively expansive and optimistic or wrapped up in hate. She has no past, no future. She exists purely in the moment. Drunk Rachel—wanting to be part of the story, needing a way to persuade Scott to talk to her—she lied. I lied.

I knew I should have put a kirby grip in, like Lucy Worsley, and then he wouldn’t have any excuse to do things like that. I wished I was as sensible as Lucy Worsley – she would never get herself into a position like this. Or if she did, she would deal with it in a brisk and no-nonsense, jolly hockey sticks manner, like the games captain telling the Upper Fourth off for having a crush on her. I bet Lucy Worsley was a games captain at school. Or, actually, she was probably head girl.

Sex is . . . well, it’s so rude, isn’t it? You wouldn’t think girls would like sex. You’d think it’s too rude for them. Doing sex with a girl, it’s a bit like putting a frog down their backs or scaring them with dead mice or throwing worms at them. They’re such sensible, grown-up sorts of people. And yet apparently even the nice ones like you sticking the rudest thing you have on your whole body up the exact, rudest part of their body that they have. It doesn’t make a lot of sense to me!

If I had been a beautiful but brainless girl of fine fortune and the perfect heroine for a story then I would have been warned of the Law and I would have known not to break it, but I would have been courageous and headstrong and done it anyway. But since I was sensible and calm in a crisis and of mediocre appearance– despite my mother’s assurances of my beauty– no one had bothered to warn me of a pit that only a heroine could possibly fall into. Girls like me didn’t have to watch out for Laws and traps.

Bien entendu, cette fidelité aux impressions premières, et purement physiques, retrouvées à chaque fois auprès de mes amies, ne concernait pas que les traits de leur visage puisque on a vu que j'étais aussi sensible à leur voix, plus troublante peut-être, (car elle n'offre pas seulement les mêmes surfaces singulières et sensuelles que lui, elle fait partie de l'abîme inaccessible qui donne le vertige des baisers sans espoir) leur voix pareille au son unique d'un petit instrument où chacune se mettait tout entière et qui n'était qu'à elle.

How nice that our former stable boy has begotten a namesake from my elder daughter,” the countess remarked acidly. “This will be the first of many brats, I am sure. Regrettably there is still no heir to the earldom…which is your responsibility, I believe. Come to me with news of your impending marriage to a bride of good blood, Westcliff, and I will evince some satisfaction. Until then, I see little reason for congratulations.” Though he displayed no emotion at his mother’s hard-hearted response to the news of Aline’s child, not to mention her infuriating preoccupation with the begetting of an heir, Marcus was hard-pressed to hold back a savage reply. In the midst of his darkening mood, he became aware of Lillian’s intent gaze. Lillian stared at him astutely, a peculiar smile touching her lips. Marcus arched one brow and asked sardonically, “Does something amuse you, Miss Bowman?” “Yes,” she murmured. “I was just thinking that it’s a wonder you haven’t rushed out to marry the first peasant girl you could find.” “Impertinent twit!” the countess exclaimed. Marcus grinned at the girl’s insolence, while the tightness in his chest eased. “Do you think I should?” he asked soberly, as if the question was worth considering. “Oh yes,” Lillian assured him with a mischievous sparkle in her eyes. “The Marsdens could use some new blood. In my opinion, the family is in grave danger of becoming overbred.” “Overbred?” Marcus repeated, wanting nothing more than to pounce on her and carry her off somewhere. “What has given you that impression, Miss Bowman?” “Oh, I don’t know…” she said idly. “Perhaps the earth-shattering importance you attach to whether one should use a fork or spoon to eat one’s pudding.” “Good manners are not the sole province of the aristocracy, Miss Bowman.” Even to himself, Marcus sounded a bit pompous. “In my opinion, my lord, an excessive preoccupation with manners and rituals is a strong indication that someone has too much time on his hands.” Marcus smiled at her impertinence. “Subversive, yet sensible,” he mused. “I’m not certain I disagree.” “Do not encourage her effrontery, Westcliff,” the countess warned. “Very well—I shall leave you to your Sisyphean task.” “What does that mean?” he heard Daisy ask. Lillian replied while her smiling gaze remained locked with Marcus’s. “It seems you avoided one too many Greek mythology lessons, dear. Sisyphus was a soul in Hades who was damned to perform an eternal task…rolling a huge boulder up a hill, only to have it roll down again just before he reached the top.” “Then if the countess is Sisyphus,” Daisy concluded, “I suppose we’re…” “The boulder,” Lady Westcliff said succinctly, causing both girls to laugh. “Do continue with our instruction, my lady,” Lillian said, giving her full attention to the elderly woman as Marcus bowed and left the room. “We’ll try not to flatten you on the way down.

I still have no choice but to bring out Minerva instead.” “But Minerva doesn’t care about men,” young Charlotte said helpfully. “She prefers dirt and rocks.” “It’s called geology,” Minerva said. “It’s a science.” “It’s certain spinsterhood, is what it is! Unnatural girl. Do sit straight in your chair, at least.” Mrs. Highwood sighed and fanned harder. To Susanna, she said, “I despair of her, truly. This is why Diana must get well, you see. Can you imagine Minerva in Society?” Susanna bit back a smile, all too easily imagining the scene. It would probably resemble her own debut. Like Minerva, she had been absorbed in unladylike pursuits, and the object of her female relations’ oft-voiced despair. At balls, she’d been that freckled Amazon in the corner, who would have been all too happy to blend into the wallpaper, if only her hair color would have allowed it. As for the gentlemen she’d met…not a one of them had managed to sweep her off her feet. To be fair, none of them had tried very hard. She shrugged off the awkward memories. That time was behind her now. Mrs. Highwood’s gaze fell on a book at the corner of the table. “I am gratified to see you keep Mrs. Worthington close at hand.” “Oh yes,” Susanna replied, reaching for the blue, leatherbound tome. “You’ll find copies of Mrs. Worthington’s Wisdom scattered everywhere throughout the village. We find it a very useful book.” “Hear that, Minerva? You would do well to learn it by heart.” When Minerva rolled her eyes, Mrs. Highwood said, “Charlotte, open it now. Read aloud the beginning of Chapter Twelve.” Charlotte reached for the book and opened it, then cleared her throat and read aloud in a dramatic voice. “’Chapter Twelve. The perils of excessive education. A young lady’s intellect should be in all ways like her undergarments. Present, pristine, and imperceptible to the casual observer.’” Mrs. Highwood harrumphed. “Yes. Just so. Hear and believe it, Minerva. Hear and believe every word. As Miss Finch says, you will find that book very useful.” Susanna took a leisurely sip of tea, swallowing with it a bitter lump of indignation. She wasn’t an angry or resentful person, as a matter of course. But once provoked, her passions required formidable effort to conceal. That book provoked her, no end. Mrs. Worthington’s Wisdom for Young Ladies was the bane of sensible girls the world over, crammed with insipid, damaging advice on every page. Susanna could have gleefully crushed its pages to powder with a mortar and pestle, labeled the vial with a skull and crossbones, and placed it on the highest shelf in her stillroom, right beside the dried foxglove leaves and deadly nightshade berries. Instead, she’d made it her mission to remove as many copies as possible from circulation. A sort of quarantine. Former residents of the Queen’s Ruby sent the books from all corners of England. One couldn’t enter a room in Spindle Cove without finding a copy or three of Mrs. Worthington’s Wisdom. And just as Susanna had told Mrs. Highwood, they found the book very useful indeed. It was the perfect size for propping a window open. It also made an excellent doorstop or paperweight. Susanna used her personal copies for pressing herbs. Or occasionally, for target practice. She motioned to Charlotte. “May I?” Taking the volume from the girl’s grip, she raised the book high. Then, with a brisk thwack, she used it to crush a bothersome gnat. With a calm smile, she placed the book on a side table. “Very useful indeed.

There were others whose whole attraction lay in a certain implacable quality (which we planned to bend in our favor), for example the terrifying jumping girl of Balbec,8 whose leaps just cleared the heads of frightened old gentlemen; what a disappointment when this figure showed us a different face, on our beginning to utter compliments inspired by the memory of her cruelty to others, and told us that she was shy, that she could never think of anything sensible to say to anyone the first time they met, she was so scared, and we’d have to wait a fortnight to have a proper conversation.

Young girls and adolescents will not know that feminist thinkers acknowledge both the value of beauty and adornment if we continue to allow patriarchal sensibilities to inform the beauty industry in all spheres. Rigid feminist dismissal of female longings for beauty has undermined feminist politics. While this sensibility is more uncommon, it is often presented by mass media as the way feminists think. Until feminists go back to the beauty industry, go back to fashion, and create an ongoing, sustained revolution, we will not be free. We will not know how to love our bodies as ourselves.

...it is poverty only which makes celibacy contemptible to a generous public! A single woman, with a very narrow income, must be a ridiculous, disagreeable old maid! the proper sport of boys and girls, but a single woman, of good fortune, is always respectable, and may be as sensible and pleasant as any body else. And the distinction is not quite so much against the candour and common sense of the world as appears at first; for a very narrow income has a tendency to contract the mind, and sour the temper. Those who can barely live, and who live perforce in a very small, and generally very inferior, society, may well be illiberal and cross.

Who do you think is angriest right now? In our country, I mean.” I shrugged. “African Americans?” She made a buzzing noise, a sort of you’re-out-but-we’ve-got-some-lovely-consolation-prizes-backstage kind of a sound. “Guess again.” “Gays?” “No, you dope. The straight white dude. He’s angry as shit. He feels emasculated.” “Honestly, Jacko.” “Of course he does.” Jackie pointed a purple fingernail at me. “You just wait. It’s gonna be a different world in a few years if we don’t do something to change it. Expanding Bible Belt, shit-ass representation in Congress, and a pack of power-hungry little boys who are tired of being told they gotta be more sensitive.” She laughed then, a wicked laugh that shook her whole body. “And don’t think they’ll all be men. The Becky Homeckies will be on their side.” “The who?” Jackie nodded at my sweats and bed-matted hair, at the pile of yesterday’s dishes in the sink, and finally at her own outfit. It was one of the more interesting fashion creations I’d seen on her in a while—paisley leggings, an oversized crocheted sweater that used to be beige but had now taken on the color of various other articles of clothing, and purple stiletto boots. “The Susie Homemakers. Those girls in matching skirts and sweaters and sensible shoes going for their Mrs. degrees. You think they like our sort? Think again.

Here’s the thing,” said Kami, doing her buttons up fast, trying to keep things casual. “I don’t think that people who are freaked out by each other’s physical existence should date.” “I cannot believe you just did that,” Jared said. “Are you crazy?” He still looked shaken, which Kami found irritating. She was sure other girls received far more enthusiastic responses when they started with the undressing. “Well, I can’t believe you walked in and said that,” she shot back. “In front of Angela!” “I had to work myself up to it,” Jared said. “I may have lost my head.” “I was acting on an impulse!” Kami said. “I still feel it was a sensible impulse.” “So what you’re saying is, we’re both crazy,” said Jared. “Well, this is going to be fun.

Young girls today were more sensible, more sophisticated. Nowadays they worried more about their exam results and did their best to ensure they would have a decent career. For them, going out with boys was simply a game, a distraction based as much as on narcissism as on sexual pleasure. Later, they would try to make a good marriage, basing their decision on a range of social and professional criteria as well as shared interests and tastes. Of course, in doing this, they cut themselves from any possibility of happiness - a condition indissociable from traditional and transient emotions which are incompatible with the practice of reason - but in doing so they hoped to escape the moral and emotional suffering which had so tortured their forebears.

It is possible to have a strong self-love without any self-satisfaction, rather with a self-discontent which is the more intense because one's own little core of egoistic sensibility is a supreme care; but Gwendolen knew nothing of such inward strife. She had a naive delight in her fortunate self, which any but the harshest saintliness will have some indulgence for in a girl who had every day seen a pleasant reflection of that self in her friends' flattery as well as in the looking-glass. And even in this beginning of troubles, while for lack of anything else to do she sat gazing at her image in the growing light, her face gathered a complacency gradual as the cheerfulness of the morning. Her beautiful lips curled into a more and more decided smile, till at last she took off her hat, leaned forward and kissed the cold glass which had looked so warm. How could she believe in sorrow? If it attacked her, she felt the force to crush it, to defy it, or run away from it, as she had done already. Anything seemed more possible than that she could go on bearing miseries, great or small.

Esther n'était certainement pas bien éduquée au sens habituel du terme, jamais l'idée ne lui serait venue de vider un cendrier ou de débarrasser le relief de ses repas, et c'est sans la moindre gêne qu'elle laissait la lumière allumée derrière elle dans les pièces qu'elle venait de quitter (il m'est arrivé, suivant pas à pas son parcours dans ma résidence de San Jose, d'avoir à actionner dix-sept commutateurs); il n'était pas davantage question de lui demander de penser à faire un achat, de ramener d'un magasin où elle se rendait une course non destinée à son propre usage, ou plus généralement de rendre un service quelconque. Comme toutes les très jolies jeunes filles elle n'était au fond bonne qu'à baiser, et il aurait été stupide de l'employer à autre chose, de la voir autrement que comme un animal de luxe, en tout choyé et gåté, protégé de tout souci comme de toute tâche ennuyeuse ou pénible afin de mieux pouvoir se consacrer à son service exclusivement sexuel. Elle n'en était pas moins très loin d'être ce monstre d'arrogance, d'égoïsme absolu et froid, au, pour parler en termes plus baudelairiens, cette infernale petite salope que sont la plupart des très jolies jeunes filles; il y avait en elle la conscience de la maladie, de la faiblesse et de la mort. Quoique belle, très belle, infiniment érotique et désirable, Esther n'en était pas moins sensible aux infirmités animales, parce qu'elle les connaissait ; c'est ce soir-là que j'en pris conscience, et que je me mis véritablement à l'aimer. Le désir physique, si violent soit-il, n'avait jamais suffi chez moi à conduire à l'amour, il n'avait pu atteindre ce stade ultime que lorsqu'il s'accompagnait, par une juxtaposition étrange, d'une compassion pour l'être désiré ; tout être vivant, évidemment, mérite la compassion du simple fait qu'il est en vie et se trouve par là-même exposé à des souffrances sans nombre, mais face à un être jeune et en pleine santé c'est une considération qui paraît bien théorique. Par sa maladie de reins, par sa faiblesse physique insoupçonnable mais réelle, Esther pouvait susciter en moi une compassion non feinte, chaque fois que l'envie me prendrait d'éprouver ce sentiment à son égard. Étant elle-même compatissante, ayant même des aspirations occasionnelles à la bonté, elle pouvait également susciter en moi l'estime, ce qui parachevait l'édifice, car je n'étais pas un être de passion, pas essentiellement, et si je pouvais désirer quelqu'un de parfaitement méprisable, s'il m'était arrivé à plusieurs reprises de baiser des filles dans l'unique but d'assurer mon emprise sur elles et au fond de les dominer, si j'étais même allé jusqu'à utiliser ce peu louable sentiment dans des sketches, jusqu'à manifester une compréhension troublante pour ces violeurs qui sacrifient leur victime immédiatement après avoir disposé de son corps, j'avais par contre toujours eu besoin d'estimer pour aimer, jamais au fond je ne m'étais senti parfaitement à l'aise dans une relation sexuelle basée sur la pure attirance érotique et l'indifférence à l'autre, j'avais toujours eu besoin, pour me sentir sexuellement heureux, d'un minimum - à défaut d'amour - de sympathie, d'estime, de compréhension mutuelle; l'humanité non, je n'y avais pas renoncé. (La possibilité d'une île, Daniel 1,15)

better than what you call the 'mercenary spirit' had come over her, and a hint here and there in her letters made me suspect that love and Laurie would win the day." "How sharp you are, Marmee, and how silent! You never said a word to me." "Mothers have need of sharp eyes and discreet tongues when they have girls to manage. I was half afraid to put the idea into your head, lest you should write and congratulate them before the thing was settled." "I'm not the scatterbrain I was. You may trust me. I'm sober and sensible enough for anyone's confidante now." "So you are, my dear, and I should have made you mine, only I fancied it might pain you to learn that your Teddy loved someone else." "Now, Mother, did you really think I could be so silly and selfish, after I'd refused his love, when it was freshest, if not best?" "I knew you were sincere then, Jo, but lately I have thought that if he came back, and asked again, you might perhaps, feel like giving another answer. Forgive me, dear, I can't help seeing that you are very lonely, and sometimes there is a hungry look in your eyes that goes

I was just thinking that it's a wonder you haven't rushed out to marry the first peasant girl you could find." "Impertinent twit!" the countess exclaimed. Marcus grinned at the girl's insolence, while the tightness in his chest eased. "Do you think I should?" he asked soberly, as if the question was worth considering. "Oh, yes," Lillian assured him with a mischievous sparkle in her eyes. "The Marsdens could use some new blood. In my opinion, the family is in grave danger of becoming overbred." "Overbred?" Marcus repeated, wanting nothing more than to pounce on her and cry her off somewhere. "What has given you that impression, Miss Bowman?" "Oh, I don't know..." she said idly. "Perhaps the earth-shattering importance you attach to wether one should use a fork or spoon to eat one's pudding." "Good manners are not the sole province of the aristocracy, Miss Bowman." Even to himself, Marcus sounded a bit pompous. "In my opinion, my lord, an excessive preoccupation with manners and rituals is a strong indication that someone has too much time on his hands." Marcus smiled at her impertinence. "Subversive, yet sensible," he mused. "I'm not certain I disagree.

Almost unconsciously, his gaze shifted across the immense ballroom to fasten on the girl, inexorably pulled to her like metal filings to a magnet. He could barely make her out since she was surrounded by her usual jostling court of ardent admirers, most of them titled, wealthy, and considerably handsomer than Nigel. If he was honest with himself, he’d have to admit that obsession would be the most accurate description of his feelings, and he hadn’t the slightest notion as to when or how that obsession had developed. However it had happened, over the last several months a ridiculous amount of space in his skull had been taken up by thoughts of lovely Amelia Easton. Fortunately, until now, none of his acquaintances had suspected that he—the most sensible man in the ton—had succumbed to such a maudlin, hopeless passion. A hopeless passion, since Amelia Easton would no sooner marry a man like Nigel than she would a butcher from Smithfield. After all, she was widely acknowledged as one of the great prizes on the matrimonial mart—beautiful, kind, good-natured, and disgustingly rich, or at least her father was. It was a most potent combination, and meant that the girl couldn’t step foot outside her family’s Mayfair townhouse without a pack of slavering bachelors in pursuit. “How

Broca’s area is adjacent to the part of the motor-control strip dedicated to the jaws, lip, and tongue, and it was once thought that Broca’s area is involved in the production of language (though obviously not speech per se, because writing and signing are just as affected). But the area seems to be implicated in grammatical processing in general. A defect in grammar will be most obvious in the output, because any slip will lead to a sentence that is conspicuously defective. Comprehension, on the other hand, can often exploit the redundancy in speech to come up with sensible interpretations with little in the way of actual parsing. For example, one can understand The dog bit the man or The apple that the boy is eating is red just by knowing that dogs bite men, boys eat apples, and apples are red. Even The car pushes the truck can be guessed at because the cause is mentioned before the effect. For a century, Broca’s aphasics fooled neurologists by using shortcuts. Their trickery was finally unmasked when psycholinguists asked them to act out sentences that could be understood only by their syntax, like The car is pushed by the truck or The girl whom the boy is pushing is tall. The patients gave the correct interpretation half the time and its opposite half the time—a mental coin flip.

Elizabeth, we’re going to have to stop.” Elizabeth’s swirling senses began to return to reality, slowly at first, and then with a sickening plummet. Passion gave way to fear and then to anguished shame as she realized she was lying in a man’s arms, her shirt unfastened, her flesh exposed to his gaze and touch. Closing her eyes, she fought back the sting of tears and shoved his hand away, lurching into an upright position. “Let me rise, please,” she whispered, her voice strangled with self-revulsion. Her skin flinched as he began to fasten her shirt, but in order to do it he had to release his hold on her, and the moment he did, she scrambled to her feet. Turning her back to him, she fastened her shirt with shaking hands and snatched her jacket from the peg beside the fire. He moved so silently that she had no idea he’d stood until his hands settled on her stiff shoulders. “Don’t be frightened of what is between us. I’ll be able to provide for you-“ All of Elizabeth’s confusion and anguish exploded in a burst of tempestuous, sobbing fury that was directed at herself, but which she hurtled at him. Tearing free of his grasp, she whirled around. “Provide for me,” she cried. “Provide what? A-a hovel in Scotland where I’ll stay while you dress the part of an English gentleman so you can gamble away everything-“ “If things go on as I expect,” he interrupted her in a voice of taut calm, “I’ll be one of the richest men in England within a year-two at the most. If they don’t, you’ll still be well provided for.” Elizabeth snatched her bonnet and backed away from him in a fear that was partly of him and partly of her own weakness. “This is madness. Utter madness.” Turning, she headed for the door. “I know,” he said gently. She reached for the door handle and jerked the door open. Behind her, his voice stopped her in midstep. “If you change your mind after we leave in the morning, you can reach me at Hammund’s town house in Upper Brook Street until Wednesday. After that I’d intended to leave for India. I’ll be gone until winter.” “I-I hope you have a safe voyage,” she said, too overwrought to wonder about the sharp tug of loss she felt at the realization he was leaving. “If you change your mind in time,” he teased, “I’ll take you with me.” Elizabeth fled in sheer terror from the gentle confidence she’d heard in his smiling voice. As she galloped through the thick fog and wet underbrush she was no longer the sensible, confident young lady she’d been before; instead she was a terrified, bewildered girl with a mountain of responsibilities and an upbringing that convinced her the wild attraction she felt for Ian Thornton was sordid and unforgivable.

When a journey we have longed to make begins to become a reality, and the mind and sensibility are starting to wonder whether it is really worth the effort, the will, which well knows that, if it turned out the journey could not be made, these feckless masters would immediately long for it to become possible again, lets them loiter in front of the station, having their say, hesitating until the last minute, while it makes sure of buying the tickets and getting us into the train before departure time. It is as invariable as the mind and sensibility are changeable; but because it is silent and never gives its reasons, it seems almost nonexistent; all the other parts of our self march to its tune unawares, though they can always see clearly their own uncertainties. So my mind and sensibility set up a debate on how much pleasure there might be in making the acquaintance of Albertine, while in front of the mirror I considered the vain and fragile charms that they would have preferred to preserve unused for some better occasion. But my will did not lose sight of the time at which I had to leave; and it was Elstir’s address that it gave to the coachman. My mind and sensibility, now that the die was cast, indulged in the luxury of thinking it was a pity. If my will had given a different address, they would have been in a state of panic.

A few mornings later Peter and Edmund were looking at the suit of armor and wondering if they could take it to bits, when the two girls rushed into the room and said, “Look out! Here comes the Macready and a whole gang with her.” “Sharp’s the word,” said Peter, and all four made off through the door at the far end of the room. But when they had got out into the Green Room and beyond it, into the library, they suddenly heard voices ahead of them, and realized that Mrs. Macready must be bringing her party of sightseers up the back stairs--instead of up the front stairs as they had expected. And after that--whether it was that they lost their heads, or that Mrs. Macready was trying to catch them, or that some magic in the house had come to life and was chasing them into Narnia--they seemed to find themselves being followed everywhere, until at last Susan said, “Oh, bother those trippers! Here--let’s get into the Wardrobe Room till they’ve passed. No one will follow us in there.” But the moment they were inside they heard voices in the passage--and then someone fumbling at the door--and then they saw the handle turning. “Quick!” said Peter. “There’s nowhere else,” and flung open the wardrobe. All four of them bundled inside it and sat there, panting, in the dark. Peter held the door closed but did not shut it; for, of course, he remembered, as every sensible person does, that you should never never shut yourself up in a wardrobe.

When the least obvious beauties of Vinteuil’s sonata were revealed to me, already, borne by the force of habit beyond the reach of my sensibility, those that I had from the first distinguished and preferred in it were beginning to escape, to avoid me. Since I was able only in successive moments to enjoy all the pleasures that this sonata gave me, I never possessed it in its entirety: it was like life itself. But, less disappointing than life is, great works of art do not begin by giving us all their best. In Vinteuil’s sonata the beauties that one discovers at once are those also of which one most soon grows tired, and for the same reason, no doubt, namely that they are less different from what one already knows. But when those first apparitions have withdrawn, there is left for our enjoyment some passage which its composition, too new and strange to offer anything but confusion to our mind, had made indistinguishable and so preserved intact; and this, which we have been meeting every day and have not guessed it, which has thus been held in reserve for us, which by the sheer force of its beauty has become invisible and has remained unknown, this comes to us last of all. But this also must be the last that we shall relinquish. And we shall love it longer than the rest because we have taken longer to get to love it. The time, moreover, that a person requires—as I required in the matter of this sonata—to penetrate a work of any depth is merely an epitome, a symbol, one might say, of the years, the centuries even that must elapse before the public can begin to cherish a masterpiece that is really new. So that the man of genius, to shelter himself from the ignorant contempt of the world, may say to himself that, since one’s contemporaries are incapable of the necessary detachment, works written for posterity should be read by posterity alone, like certain pictures which one cannot appreciate when one stands too close to them.

For Dylan, this electric assault threatened to suck the air out of everything else, only there was too much radio oxygen to suck. “Like a Rolling Stone” was the giant, all-consuming anthem of the new “generation gap” disguised as a dandy’s riddle, a dealer’s come-on. As a two-sided single, it dwarfed all comers, disarmed and rejuvenated listeners at each hearing, and created vast new imaginative spaces for groups to explore both sonically and conceptually. It came out just after Dylan’s final acoustic tour of Britain, where his lyrical profusion made him a bard, whose tabloid accolade took the form of political epithet: “anarchist.” As caught on film by D. A. Pennebaker’s documentary Don’t Look Back, the young folkie had already graduated to rock star in everything but instrumentation. “Satisfaction” held Dylan back at number two during its four-week July hold on Billboard’s summit, giving way to Herman’s Hermits’ “I’m Henry the Eighth, I Am” and Sonny and Cher’s “I Got You Babe” come August, novelty capstones to Dylan’s unending riddle. (In Britain, Dylan stalled at number four.) The ratio of classics to typical pop schlock, like Freddie and the Dreamers’ “I’m Telling You Now” or Tom Jones’s “It’s Not Unusual,” suddenly got inverted. For cosmic perspective, yesterday’s fireball, Elvis Presley, sang “Do the Clam.” Most critics have noted the Dylan influence on Lennon’s narratives. Less space gets devoted to Lennon’s effect on Dylan, which was overt: think of how Dylan rewires Chuck Berry (“Subterranean Homesick Blues”) or revels in inanity (“Rainy Day Women #12 & 35”). Even more telling, Lennon’s keening vocal harmonies in “Nowhere Man,” “And Your Bird Can Sing,” and “Dr. Robert” owed as much to the Byrds and the Beach Boys, high-production turf Dylan simply abjured. Lennon also had more stylistic stretch, both in his Beatle context and within his own sensibility, as in the pagan balalaikas in “Girl” or the deliberate amplifier feedback tripping “I Feel Fine.” Where Dylan skewed R&B to suit his psychological bent, Lennon pursued radical feats of integration wearing a hipster’s arty façade, the moptop teaching the quiet con. Building up toward Rubber Soul throughout 1965, Beatle gravity exerted subtle yet inexorable force in all directions.

Why does she angle her head like that?" "She was abandoned as a puppy. When the shelter got her, they found a maggot infestation inside her ear. Her right eardrum's permanently damaged and it messes with her balance and makes her tilt her head like that." "Poor brave girl." He leaned over and dropped another kiss on her head. Chutney let out one of her love-grunts.

The outfit was sensible, sturdy, and comfortable. Not seductive or revealing or anything she would have expected from the Fae Realm or this house, based on the stories of fae males seducing innocent human girls who wandered into the forest.

When the goat’s milk ran out (as it invariably did—the trek was long, and milk is heavy), Xan did what any sensible witch would do: once it was dark enough to see the stars, she reached up one hand and gathered starlight in her fingers, like the silken threads of spiders’ webs, and fed it to the child.

You're always such a good girl. Always so kind. I should have named you Empathy." "Emotions instead of countries? What a novel idea!

..eight or nine women and one extremely serious-looking man had decided to spend their Monday evening exercising with a demonic workout instructor n the Flatbush District rather than doing something sensible, like restocking their wine supply or doing a crossword.

When a young man, be he who he will, comes and makes love to a pretty girl, and promises marriage, he has no business to fly off from his word, only because he grows poor, and a richer girl is ready to have him. Why don't he, in such a case, sell his horses, let his house, turn off his servants, and make a thorough reform at once.

Sensible girl,” said Mrs Sinclair. “I was always assured of liking her since I am predisposed to like most things in opposition to Lady Catherine, but it seems Miss Bennet is going to make it easy for me. Tell me, how did she fare against Lady Catherine in person?

And then came Jane Rosenthal (De Niro's handpicked CEO to oversee his production company). She had adored Rocky and Bullwinkle as a girl, and her husband, real estate investor Craig Hatkoff, had made a Valentine’s Day present to her of the collected series on DVD. She, like others before her, thought there was a potential film in Ward’s iconic characters and surreal sensibility, and in 1998 she negotiated a deal with Universal Pictures to acquire the rights and produce a $75 million film for the summer moviegoing season.” ...Fearless Leader, a role for which Rosenthal thought De Niro was perfect. When she asked him, she recalled, “he really laughed at me.… He didn’t grow up watching it. It wasn’t his thing.” But she persisted. “I was always joking with him about it. Then I finally said, ‘Okay, you’ve got to get serious here. It’s a three-week role. Do you want it or not?’ ” Amazingly—perhaps because he knew the film was, as he called it, “Jane’s baby”—he did.

Her mother was good and responsible and holy and always somewhere far away in her own head, or with a headache, or napping, or just, please, leave me alone. Forget your grammy and her book. Be serious. Do something sensible. And always the girl had thought her mother was pushing her out the door, away and away, go fast. She thought this had been a sort of abandonment, but now she saw it for what it was: her mother's best love. How many generations of women had delayed their greatness only to have time extinguish it completely? How many women had run out of time while the men didn't know what to do with theirs? And what a mean trick to call such things holy or selfless. How evil to praise women for giving up each and every dream.

That's what all this is about. Hope. Yes, it's sensible and practical and folk will benefit from it. But the Christmas Kitchens are about more than giving practical help. They're about goodwill and hope, and you can never have too much of them

She is a stupid girl, and has nothing to recommend

Victor, Andy, and I sat waiting at the café within Miss Selfridge (the young fashion section of the department store) for our entourage to finish shopping. I took this opportunity to seek their advice.               “Tad proposed to me at the Oriental Club,” I declared nonchalantly.               “I know,” came Andy’s reply.               Boggled by his response, I questioned, “Why didn’t you ask me about it?” “I was waiting for you to tell me,” he answered. “He also gave you a key to his town house.” Shocked by his knowingness, I exclaimed, “How did you know?” “I know more about you than you,” he teased. Both men laughed at me. I looked at my teacher, confused. “You knew, too?” “Of course I did. I was present when Tad sought your Valet’s permission.” “Why did Tad come to you for permission?” I questioned. Victor promulgated, “Because he’s an honourable gentleman and a true romantic.” Andy nodded in agreement. My chaperone vociferated, “I’m your guardian, so he came to me to ask for your hand.” “Ask for my hand!” I exclaimed. “I’m not planning to marry him…” Before I could continue, my Valet pronounced, “Then it’s settled. You don’t want to be his property.” “I’m nobody’s property but my own!” I cried. The men burst into mirth. “I’m glad you are being sensible. In the Arab culture, being a kept boy is similar to being in a heterosexual marriage. The dominant partner has total control of his ‘wife boy,’” Triqueros commented. “I’m nobody’s ‘wife boy’!” I burst out. “And definitely not Tad’s.” “Very well then. It’s settled that you are not taking up his offer. I’ll convey your sentiments,” Andy finalized. Case closed. “I can tell him myself. I don’t need you to do it for me,” I voiced. Victor cited, “Since you are Andy’s charge, it is appropriate for him to act on your behalf to inform the intended of your decision. It’s customary protocol, as a man asks the father for his daughter’s hand.” I argued, “But I’m not a girl. I’m a boy who can make his own decisions. I am responsible for me!” Both mentors laughed again. “Are you sure about that?” my lover ruffled my hair and sniggered. “You could have fooled me.” My chaperone and I started a playful tug-of-war until my judicious professor put a stop to our silliness. “Young, stop this absurdity,” Triqueros commanded. “As I’d promised, I’m giving you a short lesson about the ‘real’ England. The existing British monarchy.” His words perked my attention.

Noah, I’m not sure it’s the minister thing that makes you attractive. You’re actually kind of cute.” His eyes widened briefly. “I am?” he asked, though kinda cute was not exactly what a man was looking for by way of praise. “Mmm-hmm. You kind of make a girl want to shave above the knees. That was a compliment by the way.” “Is that a big deal? Shaving above the knees?” he stupidly asked. She laughed. “Pardner, for my last job I had to shave above the—” “Stop,” he ordered. And she laughed some more. He helped himself to a handful of popcorn. “One minute you want to hear all about it, then it offends your little sensibilities,” she teased. “They’re not little,” he said, opening his mouth and dropping popcorn inside.

Not Your Stereotypical Southern Belle By Betsy Shearon, George Grits I grew up being more interested in scoring touchdowns than wearing tiaras. I never particularly wanted to get married and was well into my thirties before I even got engaged. And although I am a devoted aunt, the call of motherhood for me has always sounded strangely similar to the “Warning Will Robinson!” cry on the old Lost in Space television show. Still, I consider myself a true Southern Girl, simply because, as we say in the South, my mama done raised me right. I say, “yes, ma’am,” “no, sir,” “please” and “thank you.” I am respectful of my elders, even my great-aunt Ida Mable, whose food we were never allowed to eat at family reunions. (Suffice it to say that eccentricity not only runs in my family, it pretty much gallops.) I always wear clean underwear in case I am in an accident. And I always leave the house clean before I go on a trip in case I get killed and strangers have to come into my house to get my funeral wear (this is despite the fact that I have yet to read an obituary that said, “she left a husband, two children, and an immaculate house.”) And I know things that only Southern girls know, such as the fact that it is possible to “never talk to strangers and at the same time greet everyone you meet with a smile and a hello. I know that it is possible to “always tell the truth,” but to always answer “fine” when someone asks how you are--even if your hair is on fire at the time. It is this knowledge that allows us to turn the other cheek when people say ugly things like “Southern girls are stupid, barefoot and pregnant.” Southern girls realize that, given the swollen feet and ankles that accompany pregnancy, going barefoot when possible is actually a very smart and sensible thing to do--and that the Yankees who say things like that probably wouldn’t talk so ugly if their feet didn’t hurt, bless their hearts.

You look nice." His words were flat and noncommittal, but his voice and gaze were laced with sex. I looked down at myself. Button-down floral shirt. Slacks. Sensible flats. Work clothes. I'd tucked my hair into a clip before I arrived and made sure none of my lunch was still stuck in my teeth, but my appearance wasn't worth mentioning. "What's a girl got to do to look like crap around here?" [...] "Be somebody else, I guess.

We debated, and he offered praise. He always wanted to know how I came up with things. No one else has ever been so intensely interested in what I think. He never wanted me to be simply “pretty” or “a good girl.” His desire was for me to think, to develop internal endurance. He encouraged me in sports, challenged me to think. He helped develop my political sensibility and demanded that I respect people, cultures, and religions. I was never to assume that my truth is the only one that matters. In a sense, the way he brought me up laid the groundwork for how I’m able to see the world. Why

Just as I’ve reached that conclusion, and am smiling at my own observation, something happens that is the oddest thing I’ve ever experienced. There’s no way to explain it but by some sort of extrasensory theory, and as a rationalist I don’t believe in any of that stuff. Well, not much. Because while the most charming boy I have ever met in my life is holding my hand, staring into my eyes, his mouth warm and moist on my skin, I have that particular, prickling sense between my shoulder blades that tells me, inevitably and unmistakably, that someone is staring at me. And instead of ignoring it and smiling back as seductively as I can at the charming boy, as any remotely sensible girl would do under the circumstances, I’m compelled to turn my head in the direction of the stare. There are plenty of boys clustered around the wall, laughing, shoving each other playfully, yelling, competing for the attention of the girls. But somehow I know that the one who’s staring at me is the boy leaning against the post holding up the canopy, his shoulders square to it, his head ducked over the cigarette he’s holding, a tiny red point flaring in the shadow as he pulls on the filter. I shake my head and say firmly to myself, Smoking’s disgusting. I’m still looking, though.

Don't mistake me Treasure. I can offer many things, but friendship aint one of them. Now for once in your life be a sensible girl and run away.

Miss Timms must have been out of her mind,” he observed bitterly. “She said that you were utterly trustworthy and sensible.” “Well, I hope I am when it comes to being a nurse. But today I’m just me, doing what I want to do.” She took his hand gently from her arm. “Goodbye, Mr Werdmer ter Sane.

Leaving the Connecticut River March 8, 1704 Temperature 40 degrees They marched until the captives could not take another step. Eben dragged Eliza half the way and Sarah dragged her the rest. Mercy and Joseph took turns hauling Ruth. That night they slept like rocks, and in the morning Mercy understood why bears spent the whole winter sleeping. It sounded good to Mercy. Perhaps it sounded good to the Indians too, because they did not leave camp. Instead, they built two fires, gathering an enormous woodpile. Joseph was stripped of his English clothes. Too torn and filthy to bother with, they were tossed into the woods. He was given a long deerskin shirt and leggings that hung from thigh to ankle, held up by cords strung to a belt. Then came coat, hat and mittens, all Indian. How dark Joseph’s hair was. How tan his skin. Joseph looked like a young brave. In a moment, the Indians did the same with Eben, whose coloring was very English, ruddy cheeks and straw-yellow hair. He did not look at all Indian, but in deerskin, he looked tough and strong and much older. The girls were nervous. They did not want their clothes stripped off their bodies, no matter how torn and filthy. But Eben’s Indian, Thorakwaneken, hoisted a flintlock musket and looked questioningly at each girl. Mercy could not imagine what he was asking of her. Eliza did not notice him or the gun. And Ruth was the last person to whom a sensible Indian would hand a weapon. Sarah, however, nodded. “I’m a good shot.” She took the musket from Thorakwaneken. Food was such a problem that even Joseph and Eben would be armed and sent forth to hunt. The girls would stay by the fire with enough wood to last for days, and Sarah to fend off wolves.

I was meeting a mountain. I meant to kiss her in secret. I meant to wed her under the midnight dark. The prettiest mountain you ever saw, sparkling with snow in all the right places, rich with granite and tourmaline and silver, sturdy and sensible and weathered by experience of eons. When she saw me, my mountain's pine trees bristled and the wind in her heights whistled my name. When I saw her, I felt rivers break through the rock of my heart and carve me into a new shape.

I am the Velma. I am the girl with the bowl haircut and the sensible sweater—the investigator, not the cause of investigation.

Of course, I have to keep it inside now that I’m a fifth former, but when I think about seeing Mother and Daddy again, and the marvellous time we have ahead of us, I could dance for joy!’ ‘What a pity that we are too old and sensible to do just that,’ laughed Susan. ‘I would love to see the faces of the younger girls if they saw us fifth formers dancing a jig all the way to the common-room.

There are thirty kids there, too,” Justineau adds. “And most of your men. What are we going to do? Just walk away from them?” “That’s exactly what we’re going to do,” Parks tells them. “If you shut up, I’ll tell you why. I’ve been up on that radio every ten or fifteen minutes since we stopped. Not only is there no answer from the base, there’s no answer full stop. Nobody else got out of there. Or if they did, they got out without wheels or comms, which means they might just as well be on another planet as far as we’re concerned. There’s no way to get their attention right now without getting the junkers bouncing at us too. If we meet them on the road, that’s great. Otherwise, we’re alone, and the only sensible thing to do is to head for home fires. For Beacon.” Caldwell

acknowledgements Huge thanks, obviously, to the superhuman Jane Austen for her books. Besides those masterpieces, I also reviewed (obsessively) the BBC 1995 production of Pride and Prejudice, as well as Emma (1996), Sense and Sensibility (1995), Persuasion (1995), and Patricia Rozema’s gorgeous revision of Mansfield Park (1999). I’m also indebted to Daniel Pool’s What Jane Austen Ate and Charles Dickens Knew for period information. The World of Jane Austen, by Nigel Nicholson, who also useful, and I scoured the Web site Jessamyn’s Regency Costume Companion for clothing information. Despite the research, I’d be surprised if I didn’t make mistakes, but they’re sure to be my fault, so please don’t blame my sources. Special thanks to the amazing Amanda Katz for her inspired editing, as well as to Nadia Cornier, Cordelia Brand, Ann Cannon, Rosi Hayes, and Mette Ivie Harrison. And can I just say again how much I love Bloomsbury? I do. Everyone there is so cool. And also quite attractive (though that hardly seems fair, does it?). And honey, you know that this Colin Firth thing isn’t really serious. You are my fantasy man and my real man. I need no other fella in all the world besides you. It’s just a girl thing, I swear.

it’s only like a little pin-prick. I’ll let you see my railway if you are good and don’t cry. “She doesn’t understand yet,” said Nurse Chiffinch. “When she’s a big girl she’ll love to play with your toys and things, won’t you, chicky-wicky?” Tony’s face suddenly became perfectly expressionless, and he walked away from Nurse with some dignity. “Of course she can’t understand,” he confided to Mrs. Knox, “but it’s nice for her to be talked to sensibly. If people say things like chicky-wicky she’ll never learn English properly. I shall talk sensibly to her and train her to be educated.

Fleur Skin CreamIf you do not like bulk-eating 3x each day , try eating smaller portions throughout the entire day. they're liable for that "girl next door" glow that we are always jealous of. However, with the proper skin care this damage are often prevented and in some cases repaired. Studies have shown that folks who attend religious services or feel spiritual tend to measure longer, are healthier, and have lower rates of depression and anxiety. The so-called sensible decision seems to be a waste of money! This lifestyle shows in our skin, our body and heart.

Filthy-minded old bastard,' he muttered viciously under his breath. No wonder the world such a rotten place, rotten and filthy and cheap and smelly. Where is that place they talk of and paint nice pictures of and described in all the homey magazines? Where is that place with the clean, white cottages surrounding the new, red brick church with the clean, white steeple, were the families all have two children, one boy and one girl, and a shiny new car in the garage and a dog and a cat and life is like living in the land of the happily-ever-after? Surely it must be around here someplace, someplace in America. Or is it just that it's not for me? Maybe I dealt myself out, but what about that young kid on Burnside who was in the army and found it wasn't enough so that he has to keep proving to everyone who comes in for a cup of coffee that he was fighting for his country like the button on his shirt says he did because the army didn't do anything about his face to make him look more American? And what about the poor niggers on Jackson Street who can't find anything better to do than spit on the sidewalk and show me the way to Tokyo? They're on the outside looking in, just like that kid and just like me and just like everybody else I’ve ever seen or known. Even Mr. Carrick. Why isn't he in? Why is he on the outside squandering his goodness on outcasts like me? Maybe the answer is that there is no in. Maybe the whole damn country is pushing and shoving and screaming to get into some place that doesn't exist, because they don't know that the outside could be the inside if only they would stop all this pushing and shoving and screaming, and they haven't got enough sense to realise that. That makes sense. I've got the answer all figured out, simple and neat, and sensible.

Gehrig wasn’t a drinker. He didn’t chase girls or thrills or drive fast cars. He was no “good-time Charlie,” he’d often say. At the same time, he made it clear, “I’m not a preacher and I’m not a saint.” His biographer, Paul Gallico, who grew up in New York City only a few years ahead of Gehrig wrote that the man’s “clean living did not grow out of a smugness and prudery, a desire for personal sanctification. He had a stubborn, pushing ambition. He wanted something. He chose the most sensible and efficient route to getting it.

There is nothing wrong with being a nice person, nor is it my intent to undermine the unique sensibilities of women and girls. But girls need to have the tools to say no, to ask for what they need, and to say what they think. Too many girls and women walk away from conversations muttering to themselves about what they really wanted to say. When kindness comes at the expense of truth, it is not a kindness worth having. And when generosity leads to silence or abuse, it is not a generosity worth giving.

Also, there was a dash and latent energy about him that set two hundred and five girls to re-reading Laura Jean Libbey with a new and personal interest. Lida was not one of the two hundred and five. She was sensible. And her ambitions were all sane, not based on literary trash.

Few thought violent resistance was sensible; there was a broad nationwide fear of young men living in the woods, with neither jobs nor families, clamoring for guns and revenge. What reasonable person would support lawless adolescents with bombs?

doesn’t help that Charlotte’s younger than you are, and she’s a damn pretty girl,” Alex said sensibly. “Yes, she is.” Sasha sighed. It was too late to catch a flight that night, but she switched their flight to an earlier one the next morning, and they left the hotel at eight o’clock, and were back in New York at one. She wanted to kiss the ground. “Well, that’s over with,” she said, as they got into a cab at the airport. “We don’t have to see them again till the wedding. Are you ready to back out yet?” she asked him, and he laughed. “Of course not. Just don’t ever leave me alone with your mother. She scares me to death.” “Don’t worry, I won’t. I promise. Don’t leave me alone with her either.” He agreed. They went back to the apartment to drop off their things, and everyone was out, even Morgan, who had hardly left the house recently. Sasha hoped it was a good sign. —

Jonquil," he began, this time on a softer key. "After all that's happened between us, I wanted to come back and see you. Whatever I do in the future I'll never love another girl as I've loved you.

wasn’t, um, it didn’t seem wrong to me at the time. I just thought he was trying to be sensible and help get Andie back quicker.

You think you’re better than everyone else. You think the rules don’t apply to you. You breeze into town, working your charm on all the girls, then walk away when you realize they aren’t the skin-walker you’re looking for. You find her”--Sam pointed at me--“and you use her, too, but apparently, she’s forgiven you. Maya’s smart and she’s sensible, so maybe I’m trying to figure out why the hell she’s with you when there are great guys like…” She stumbled, as if searching for a name. “Like Brendan. You’ve got some kind of hold over her, and I don’t like it.” Rafe leaned over and whispered. “It’s a love spell I picked up from a witch over in Nanaimo. But don’t tell Maya.” “You think you’re funny.” “No, I think you have your own issue with me and I think I know what it is. But it has nothing to do with me personally, so I’m going to try not to take it personally. And, while I might be enjoying this--” He lifted his hand, which was still clasping mine. “I know it’s as temporary as a love spell. Give it a few hours and she’ll hate me again.” “Hate’s a strong word,” I said. “Strong emotion is better than indifference.” He grinned at me, then looked at the others. “Now, if we can stop bickering for a few minutes, I’ll tell you my plan.” His gaze moved to Sam. “Which I’m sure Maya and Daniel will change, if they don’t outright reject it, and I’m fine with that.

And it's about this whole "secrets" business. We all have them. Every single one of us has something we're keeping inside... sometimes to protect ourselves, sometimes to protect others. The whole tendency in contemporary society to "tell all" or put it all in living color on Facebook in the interest of "honesty"... is hooey. As Reynard says in The Girl with the Sweetest Secret, he possesses some secrets he will never reveal because he has learned the harm malicious or just unfettered sharing can do. Loving others means putting their welfare above our own desire to share or even confess. If love is the prime value we hold, we must make certain what we will reveal has a critical or urgent moral imperative (i.e., to prevent an injustice, loss of life, damage to health, or the abuse of power). Think of the secrets you hold about yourself, your loved ones, and those you work and live with, Which of them would be worth hurting your spouse or family to reveal? Sobering to think about.

Girl, you don't have to open the book of your whole life before him. Just let him peek into selected extracts. Slowly. And sensibly.

Cards on the table, girls? Karl has served a sentence at Exeter prison for assault; Antony for theft. Karl was merely sticking up for a friend, you understand, and – hand on heart – would do the same again. His friend was being picked on in a bar and he hates bullying. Me, I am struggling with the paradox – bullying versus assault, and do we really lock people up for minor altercations? – but the girls seem fascinated, and in their sweet and liberal naivety are saying that loyalty is a good thing and they had a bloke from prison who came into their school once and told them how he had completely turned his life around after serving time over drugs. Covered in tattoos, he was. Covered. ‘Wow. Jail. So what was that really like?’ It is at this point I consider my role. Privately I am picturing Anna’s mother toasting her bottom by her Aga, worrying with her husband if their little girl will be all right, and he is telling her not to fuss so. They are growing up fast. Sensible girls. They will be fine, love. And I am thinking that they are not fine at all. For Karl is now thinking that the safest thing for the girls would be to have someone who knows London well chaperoning them during their visit. Karl and Antony are going to stay with friends in Vauxhall and fancy a big night to celebrate their release. How about they meet the girls after the theatre and try the club together? This is when I decide that I need to phone the girls’ parents. They have named their hamlet. Anna lives on a farm. It’s not rocket science. I can phone the post office or local pub; how many farms can there be? But now Anna isn’t sure at all. No. They should probably have an early night so they can hit the shops tomorrow morning. They have this plan, see, to go to Liberty’s first thing because Sarah is determined to try on something by Stella McCartney and get a picture on her phone. Good girl, I am thinking. Sensible girl. Spare me the intervention, Anna. But there is a complication, for Sarah seems suddenly to have taken a shine to Antony. There is a second trip to the buffet and they swap seats on their return – Anna now sitting with Karl and Sarah with Antony, who is telling her about his regrets at stuffing up his life. He only turned to crime out of desperation, he says, because he couldn’t get a job. Couldn’t support his son. Son? It sweeps over me, then. The shadow from the thatched canopy of my chocolate-box life –

Lucy picked up the point. “I remember this one time when I was in the third grade? And Jesse Cantu decided that he liked me? But I didn’t like him? So he decided that I would fall in love with him if he rescued me from some kind of danger, because that’s what always happens in the movies? So one day he told me that there was a surprise waiting for me in the cupboard at the back of the classroom and all I had to do was go in at recess and open the cupboard door—” “And you believed him?” Benno interrupted, aghast. “Of course!” Lucy said indignantly. “Because I’m from Mississippi! Where we believe people! So anyway, when I opened the cupboard there was a whole mess of spiders in there and I know people say that spiders scuttle away when they see you coming, but these spiders jumped out at me like they were rabid or something and Jesse ran into the room to save me but I was screaming so much that the principal called 911!” She paused for breath. “And the only good thing that happened was that we all got out of school for the rest of the day.” There was a brief silence as everyone absorbed this. Finally Silvia muttered, “Men are pigs.” Giacomo sighed. “How old was this boy with the spiders?” he asked Lucy in a patient voice, as if they had all gone off the rails but were fortunate that he was there to put them right. She frowned, as if suspecting a trick, but finally answered, “Eight.” “As I thought! Far too young to realize what a mistake he was making,” he said triumphantly. “But I’m sure he learned from this sad experience, yes? He didn’t keep trying to attract women with spiders?” “Well, no, of course not,” Lucy said. “Jesse’s still real immature, but he’s not an idiot.” “There you are, then.” Giacomo leaned his chair back, teetering on the back two legs, looking pleased with himself. “Everyone makes mistakes in love. The point is to learn from them. For example, Jesse learned—” “What?” Kate scoffed. “That attacking a girl with spiders isn’t a good way to say ‘I love you’? That should have been obvious from the start.” “Well, yes.” He nodded, as if conceding the point, but then added. “Of course, all knowledge is useful.” “But not all knowledge is worth the cost.” “And what cost is that?” Giacomo’s deep brown eyes were alight with enjoyment. “Looking like a fool.” “Oh, that.” He folded his arms across his chest with the air of one who is about to win an argument. “That’s nothing to concern yourself with. After all, love makes fools of everyone, don’t you agree?” “No, I don’t.” Kate bit off each word. “I don’t agree at all.” “How astonishing,” he muttered. “In fact,” she said meaningfully, “I would say that love only makes fools of those who were fools to begin with.” She smiled at him, clearly pleased with her riposte. Giacomo let his chair fall back to the floor with a thump. “If the world was left to people like you,” he said in an accusing tone, “we’d all be computing love’s logic on computers and dissecting our hearts in a biology lab.” “If the world were left to people like me,” Kate said with conviction, “it would be a much better place to live.” “Oh, yes,” he said sarcastically. “Because it would be orderly. Sensible. And dull.” “Love doesn’t have to end in riots and disaster and, and, and . . . spider attacks!” she said hotly.

Sarah, his fifteen-year-old daughter, supposedly at boarding school, a very expensive one, in the coronary area. It didn’t so much drain his resources as blast a hole through them – wide and unstoppable. He tried for composure. ‘Whatcha doing home, not half term already?’ ‘No. I got suspended.’ ‘What? What on earth for? Got to get me a drink.’ He poured a sensible measure of Glenlivet, then added to it, took a heavy slug and glanced at his daughter. She was in that eternal moment of preciousness between girl and woman. She loved and loathed her dad in equal measure. He looked closer, said: ‘Good grief, are those hooks in your lips?’ ‘It’s fashion, Dad.’ ‘Bloody painful, I’d say. Is that why you’re home?’ ‘Course not. Mum says not to tell you, I didn’t do nuffink.’ Roberts sighed: an ever-constant cloud of financial ruin hung over his head, just to teach her how to pronounce ‘nothing’. And she said it as if she’d submerged south of the river and never surfaced.

It wasn't, [Nancy] grasped, so much that he was a dirty little man as that he probably felt she was inaccessible to him and was therefore determined to find fault with her. Being a singularly lovely girl, she was in fact used the the type, having suffered considerably at their hands at university. And Jake, more than anything, reminded her of those insufferably bright boys on campus, self-declared intellectuals, usually Jewish, charged with bombast and abominable poetry in lower-case letters, who were aroused by her presence, and yet were too gauche (and terrified) to speak out and actually ask for a date. Instead they sat at the table next to her in the student union, aggressively calling attention to themselves. Speculating loudly on what they took to be her icy manner. Or they slid belligerently into the seat next to her at lectures, trying to bedazzle with their questions. They also ridiculed her to girls less happily endowed, wreaking vengeance for a rejection they anticipated, but were too cowardly to risk, and bandied suggestions about her secret sexual life sufficiently coarse to make her dry. No matter that she took immense pains not to be provocative, swimming in sloppy joe sweaters, sensible skirts, and flat shoes. Going out of her way to discourage boys the other girls coveted. For this only proved that Nancy Croft was remote; splendidly made, yest, but glacier-like.

And as Miss Austen wrote, ‘It is poverty only which makes celibacy contemptible to a generous public! A single woman, with a very narrow income, must be a ridiculous, disagreeable, old maid! The proper sport of boys and girls; but a single woman, of good fortune, is always respectable, and may be as sensible and pleasant as anybody else.

But she remembered this as a joke, fondly. Woe is the natural end of life, yet we go on having babies. No, said Nanny, an echo in Melena's mind (and editorializing as usual): No, no, you pretty little pampered hussy. We don't go on having babies, that's quite apparent. We only have babies when we're young enough not to know how grim life turns out. Once we really get the full measure of it we're slow learners, we women-we dry up in disgust and sensibly halt production. But men don't dry up, Melena objected; they can father to the death. Ah, we're slow learners, Nanny countered. But they can't learn at all.

If grown-ups were sensible, they would allow a child to follow its own instinct. Nature must surely know better than mothers; and my nature tells me to sit up at nights and have breakfast in bed.

But, as I explained to Doo Pak, being a nerd in America is actually quite stylish, and most sensible girls WANT to date a nerd, as opposed to a jock or a playa.

…it isn’t the thousands of leather- and cloth-covered books that lured me here. No, it’s the ladder. The fairytale ladder. The rolling ladder. The Professor Henry Higgins in his library ladder. The Belle in the bookseller’s shop, singing about her provincial life ladder. I’ll spend all my future time in this library—house—as museum director in my sensible suits and professional demeanor. But today, I will grant myself one small fantasy coming true. Show me a girl who loves to read who hasn’t had the same fantasy, and I’ll show you—nothing. That girl doesn’t exist.

Saunders talked about how when he was a child, a young girl was teased at his school and, although he didn’t tease her and even defended her a little, he still thought about it. He said: So here’s something I know to be true, although it’s a little corny, and I don’t quite know what to do with it: What I regret most in my life are failures of kindness. Those moments when another human being was there, in front of me, suffering, and I responded…sensibly. Reservedly. Mildly.

On Writing The most important is that the writer’s original perception of a character or characters may be as erroneous as the readers. Running a close second was the realization that stopping a piece of work just because it’s hard, either emotionally or imaginatively is a bad idea. Sometimes you have to go on when you don’t feel like it, and sometimes you’re doing god work when it feels like all you’re managing is to shovel shit from a sitting position. The idea that creative endeavor and mind-altering substances are entwined is one of the great pop-intellectual myths of our time. Four twentieth century writers; Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Sherwood Anderson and the poet Dylan Thomas. They are the writers who largely formed our vision of an existential English speaking wasteland where people have been cut off from one another and live in an atmosphere of strangulation and despair. These concepts are very familiar to most alcoholics; the common reaction to them is amusement. Substance abusing writers are just substance abusers - common garden variety drunks and druggies, in other words. Any claims that the drugs and alcohol are necessary to dull a finer sensibility are just the usual self-serving bullshit…. for an addict, the right to the drink or drug of choice must be preserved at all costs. Hemingway and Fitzgerald didn’t drink because they were creative, alienated, or morally weak. They drank because that’s what alkies are wired up to do. Creative people probably do run a greater risk of alcoholism and addiction than those in some other jubs, but so what? We all look pretty much the same when we’re puking in the gutter. You can approach the act of writing with nervousness, excitement, hopefulness, or even despair - the sense that you can never completely put on the pages what’s in your mind and heart. You can come to the act with fists clenched and your eyes narrowed, ready to kick ass and take names. You can come to it because you want a girl to marry you, or because you want to change the world. Come to it any way but lightly. Let me say it again, you must not come lightly to the blank page. I am not asking you to come reverently or unquestioningly; I’m not asking you to be politically correct or to cast aside your sense of humor (please God you have one). This isn’t a popularity contest, it isn’t the moral olympics and it’s not church. But it’s writing, damn it, not washing the car. If you take it seriously, we can do business. If you can’t or won’t, it’s time for you to close the book and do something else.

Her concern had made him realize that up until now he’d not had one person in his life to offer him proper, empathetic, sensible, caring advice about his life, his choices, not ever.

Nice guys don’t violate your space or sensibilities by pressuring you or crossing your boundaries.

I don’t understand,” I moaned, rubbing my temples. “How could anyone think that she’s the Chosen One? There is no hint of any magic about her.” “No offense, Susan,” Candice said mildly. “But if you were to hold a photo of you and Audrina up to a crowd and ask them to pick the Chosen One, they’re going to pick the awkward-but-uniquely-pretty teenage girl with the guitar, not the no-nonsense capable middle-aged woman with the FUPA and sensible shoes.