I consider a country-dance as an emblem of marriage. Fidelity and complaisance are the principle duties of both; and those men who do not choose to dance or to marry them selves, have no business with the partners or wives of the neighbors.

More from Northanger Abbey

• No man is offended by another man’s admiration of the woman he loves, it is the woman only who can make it a torment.
• A lady's imagination is very rapid; it jumps from admiration to love, from love to matrimony in a moment.
• A man would always wish to give a woman a better home than the one he takes her from; and he who can do it, where there is no doubt of her regard, must, I think, be the happiest of mortals.
• A mind lively and at ease, can do with seeing nothing, and can see nothing that does not answer.
• A Mr. (save, perhaps, some half dozen in the nation,) always needs a note of explanation.
• An artist cannot do anything slovenly.