““Life certainly was not so jocund a thing to her as to most young women. She had had one or two very hard blows—blows that had knocked her down so much that she could not hope ever to stand up again quite so upright and firm as she had done before; and though no one was giving her blows now, yet the days somehow lagged, and she did not seem to care much whether it were even or morning, noon or night.””
![“Beauty is a fading flower;”[3] and, applied particularly to woman’s loveliness, there is none more favourite among that bundle of dull platitudes, of insipid, trite commonplaces which enrol themselves under the head of moral maxims. Of course it is true—tiresomely, provokingly, heart-breakingly…” quote by Rhoda Broughton](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/img-quotes/16a/rhoda-broughton-25508_beauty_beauty-is-a-fading-flower-3-and-applied_371805.jpg)
![“To how few people a premonition of what is going to happen to them, either of sweet or sour, is vouchsafed! Is it a blessing or a curse? A blessing, I suppose, on the principle of “whatever is, is right”[376]—-a blessing even apart from that doctrine, I think. Would the delight of gloating over…” quote by Rhoda Broughton](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/img-quotes/3d3/rhoda-broughton-25508_blessings_to-how-few-people-a-premonition-of-what_666590.jpg)
