When it comes to the science of annoyance, commend us to the lovely sex! Their methods have a _finesse_, a suppleness, a universal adaptability, that does them infinite credit; and man, with all his strength, and all his majesty, and his commanding talent, is about as well off as a buffalo or a bison against a tiny, rainbow-winged gnat or mosquito, who bites, sings, and stings everywhere at once, with an infinite grace and facility.
A woman without magnanimity, without generosity, who has no love, and whom a man loves, is a terrible antagonist.

To give up or to fight often seems equally impossible.
How is a man going to make a woman have a good time, who is determined not to have it?
Lillie had sense enough to see, that, if she settled down into enjoyment of the little agreeablenesses and domesticities of the winter society in Springdale, she should lose her battle, and John would keep her there for life.

The only way was to keep him as uncomfortable as possible without really breaking her power over him.
In the long-run, in these encounters of will, the woman has every advantage.

The constant dropping that wears away the stone has passed into a proverb.
Lillie meant to go to New York, and have a long campaign at the Follingsbees.

The thing had been all promised and arranged between them; and it was necessary that she should appear sufficiently miserable, and that John should be made sufficiently uncomfortable, to consent with effusion, at last, when her intentions were announced.
These purposes were not distinctly stated to herself; for, as we have before intimated, uncultivated natures, who have never thought for a serious moment on self-education, or the way their character is forming, act purely from a sort of instinct, and do not even in their own minds fairly and squarely face their own motives and purposes; if they only did, their good angel would wear a less dejected look than he generally must.
Lillie had power enough, in that small circle, to stop and interrupt almost all its comfortable literary culture.