"Of itself, often, and they say self-love lies at the bottom of all our actions."
"You are the last person to hold this doctrine, beloved, for those who live most in your confidence declare that all traces of self are lost in your very nature."
"Most in my confidence! My father--- my dear, kind father, has then been betraying his besetting weakness, by extolling the gift he has made."
"Your kind, excellent father, knows too well the total want of necessity for any such thing. If the truth must be confessed, I have been passing a quarter of an hour with worthy Ann Sidley."
"Nanny--dear old Nanny!--and you have been weak enough, traitor, to listen to the eulogiums of a nurse on her child!"
"All praise of thee, my blessed Eve, is grateful to my ears, and who can speak more understandingly of those domestic qualities which lie at the root of domestic bliss, than those who have seen you in your most intimate life, from childhood down to the moment when you have assumed the duties of a wife?"
"Paul, Paul, thou art beside thyself; too much learning hath made thee mad!"
"I am not mad, most beloved and beautiful Eve, but blessed to a degree that might indeed upset a stronger reason."
"We will now talk of other things," said Eve, raising his hand to her lips in respectful affection, and looking gratefully up into his fond and eloquent eyes; "I hope the feeling of which you so lately spoke has subsided, and that you no longer feel yourself a stranger in the dwelling of your own family."
"Now that I can claim a right through you, I confess that my conscience is getting to be easier on this point. Have you been yet told of the arrangement that the older heads meditate in reference to our future means?"