George Sand

“ If she were only ugly, I could still adore her, but I should not engage her for the theatre, for talent without beauty is often only a misfortune and a torment to a woman. What are you looking at, maestro, and why do you stop ? "
"This is the landing and I do not see any gondolas. But what are you looking at yourself, count? ”

“ The administration, seeing that this was inevitable, had sometimes admitted to the school of music the children of poor artists, whose nomadic existence did not admit of a very long stay in Venice. Among this number was the little Consuelo, who had been born in Spain, and who had come thence to Italy by way of St. Petersburg, Constantinople, Mexico, Archangel, or any other still more direct route, employed peculiarly by Bohemians.
She was a Bohemian only by profession and in name, for by race she was neither Gitana nor Hindoo, nor yet a Jew. ”

“ As she grew fast and as her mother n as wretchedly poor, her dresses were always a year too short for her, which gate to her long legs, accustomed to the public gaze, a sort of wild grace and frankness which caused one to feel mingled pleasure and pity. ”

“ Faces which do not please lose by degrees the faculty of pleasing. Their possessors care no more for them than others do, and they take on a carelessness of expression which becomes more and more repulsive. ”

“ Anzoleto drew his naked legs from the water, in which they had been carelessly hanging, while he was employed in making holes with a large needle in those pretty shells which the Venetians have poetically named fiore di mare. ”

“ Chiesa di San Lazzaro dei Mendicanti, Venezia All these young people were not equally poor, and it is very certain that, in spite of the great integrity of the administration, some had slipped in to whom it was rather a speculation than a necessity to receive at the cost of the Republic the training of an artist, and means to establish themselves in life. ”