"My idea of good company is the company of clever, well-informed people who have a great deal of conversation; that is what I call good company."

"It was gratitude; gratitude, not merely for having once loved her, but for loving her still well enough to forgive all the petulance and acrimony of her manner in rejecting him, and all the unjust accusations accompanying her rejection."

"Nobody, who has not been in the interior of a family, can say what the difficulties of any individual of that family may be."

"A mind lively and at ease, can do with seeing nothing, and can see nothing that does not answer."

"It was impossible to quarrel with words, whose tremulous inequality showed indisposition so plainly."

"If, however, I am allowed to think that you and yours feel an interest in my fate and actions, it may be the means-it may put me on my guard-at least, it may be something to live for."

"We are all fools in love."

"One does not love a place the less for having suffered in it, unless it has been all suffering, nothing but suffering."

"Alas! with all her reasoning, she found, that to retentive feelings eight years may be little more than nothing."

"There is one thing, Emma, which a man can always do if he chooses, and that is his duty; not by manoeuvring and finessing, but by vigour and resolution. - Mr. Knightley."

"Walter Scott has no business to write novels, especially good ones. - It is not fair. - He has fame and profit enough as a poet, and should not be taking the bread out of other people's mouths. - I do not like him, and do not mean to like Waverley if I can help it - but fear I must."

"That will do extremely well, child. You have delighted us long enough. Let the other young ladies have time to exhibit."

"Between Barton and Delaford, there was that constant communication which strong family affection would naturally dictate;-and among the merits and the happiness of Elinor and Marianne, let it not be ranked as the least considerable, that though sisters, and living almost within sight of each other, they could live without disagreement between themselves, or producing coolness between their husbands."

"The I examined my own heart. And there you were. Never, I fear, to be removed."

"Her tears fell abundantly-but her grief was so truly artless, that no dignity could have made it more respectable in Emma's eyes-and she listened to her and tried to console her with all her heart and understanding-really for the time convinced that Harriet was the superior creature of the two-and that to resemble her would be more for her own welfare and happiness than all that genius or intelligence could do.It was rather too late in the day to set about being simple-minded and ignorant; but she left her with every previous resolution confirmed of being humble and discreet, and repressing imagination all the rest of her life."

"I am no indiscriminate novel reader. The mere trash of the common circulating library I hold in the highest contempt."

"He then departed, to make himself still more interesting, in the midst of an heavy rain."

"Emma has been meaning to read more ever since she was twelve years old. I have seen a great many lists of her drawingup at various times of books that she meant to read regularly through-and very good lists they were-very well chosen, and very neatly arranged-sometimes alphabetically, and sometimes by some other rule. The list she drew up when only fourteen-I remember thinking it did her judgment so much credit, that I preserved it some time; and I dare say she may have made out a very good list now. But I have done with expecting any course of steady reading from Emma. She will never submit to any thing requiring industry and patience, and a subjection of the fancy to the understanding."

"But one never does form a just idea of anybody beforehand. One takes up a notion and runs away with it."

"They were rather handsome, had been educated in one of the first private seminaries in town."

"One man's ways may be as good as another's, but we all like our own best."

"It is only a novel... or, in short, only some work in which the greatest powers of the mind are displayed, in which the most thorough knowledge of human nature, the happiest delineation of its varieties, the liveliest effusions of wit and humour, are conveyed to the world in the best-chosen language."

"Which of all my important nothings shall I tell you first?"

"What praise is more valuable than the praise of an intelligent servant?"

"It was gratitude; gratitude, not merelyfor having once loved her, but for loving her still well enough to forgive all the petulance and acrimony of her manner in rejecting him."

"The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid."

"It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife."

"There are certainly not so many men of large fortune in the world, as there are pretty women to deserve them."

"How I hate the sight of an umbrella!"

"She had received ideas which disposed her to be courteous and kind to all, and to pity every one, as being less happy than herself."

"Her feelings were very acute, and too little understood to be properly attended to. Nobody meant to be unkind, but nobody put themselves out of their way to secure her comfort."

"My good qualities are under your protection, and you are to exaggerate them as much as possible; and, in return, it belongs to me to find occasion for teasing and quarreling with you as often as may be..."

"An interval of meditation, serious and grateful, was the best corrective of everything dangerous."

"There is something so amiable in the prejudices of a young mind, that one is sorry to see them give way to the reception of more general opinions."

"Nobody can tell what I suffer! But it is always so. Those who do not complain are never pitied."

"In vain have I struggled. It will not do. My feelings will not be repressed. You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you."

"You deserve a longer letter than this, but it is my unhappy fate seldom to treat people so well as they deserve."

"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."

"It is a difference of opinion which does not admit of proof. We each begin probably with a little bias towards our own sex, and upon that bias build every circumstance in favour of it which has occurred within our own circle."

"Affectation of candour is common enough-one meets with it everywhere. But to be candid without ostentation or design-to take the good of everybody's character and make it still better, and say nothing of the bad-belongs to you alone."

"And Marianne, who had the knack of finding her way in every house to the library, however it might be avoided by the family in general, soon procured herself a book."

"I do not want people to be very agreeable, as it saves me the trouble of liking them a great deal."

"A woman, especially, if she have the misfortune of knowing anything, should conceal it as well as she can."

"Books-oh! no. I am sure we never read the same, or not with the samefeelings.""I am sorry you think so; but if that be the case, there can at least beno want of subject. We may compare our different opinions."

"Single women have a dreadful propensity for being poor. Which is one very strong argument in favor of matrimony."

"My Emma, does not every thing serve to prove more and more the beauty of truth and sincerity in all our dealings with each other?"

"For though a very few hours spent in the hard labour of incessant talking will dispatch more subjects than can really be in common between any two rational creatures, yet with lovers it is different. Between them no subject is finished, no communication is ever made, till it has been made at least twenty times over."

"Had I been in love, I could not have been more wretchedly blind. But vanity, not love, has been my folly."

"Do not consider me now as an elegant female intending to plague you, but as a rational creature speaking the truth from her heart."

"And this," cried Darcy, as he walked with quick steps across the room, "is your opinion of me! This is the estimation in which you hold me! I thank you for explaining it so fully."