And I hope it will be with a clergyman, for I do so love parish work." "I don't think I want to get married," said Elisabeth slowly, "not even to a clergyman." "How queer of you! Why not ?" "Because I want to paint pictures and to become a great artist.

I feel there is such a lot in me that I want to say, and that I must say; and I can only say it by means of pictures.

It would be dreadful to die before you had delivered the message that you had been sent into the world to deliver, don't you think ?" "It would be more dreadful to die before you had found one man to whom you would be everything, and who would be everything to you," replied Felicia.
"Oh! I mean to fall in love, because everybody does, and I hate to be behindhand with things; but I shall do it just as an experience, to make me paint better pictures.

I read in a book the other day that you must fall in love before you can become a true artist; so I mean to do so.
But it won't be as important to me as my art," said Elisabeth, who was as yet young enough to be extremely wise.
"Still, it must be lovely to know there is one person in the world to whom you can tell all your thoughts, and who will understand them, and be interested in them." "It must be far lovelier to know that you have the power to tell all your thoughts to the whole world, and that the world will understand them and be interested in them," Elisabeth persisted.
"I don't think so.

I should like to fall in love with a man who was so much better than I, that I could lean on him and learn from him in everything; and I should like to feel that whatever goodness or cleverness there was in me was all owing to him, and that I was nothing by myself, but everything with him." "I shouldn't.