"She looked back as well as she could; but it was all confusion. She had taken up the idea, she supposed and made everything bend to it."

"I could not sit seriously down to write a serious Romance under any other motive than to save my life, & if it were indispensable for me to keep it up & never relax into laughing at myself or other people, I am sure I should be hung before I had finished the first chapter. No - I must keep my own style & go on in my own way; and though I may never succeed again in that, I am convinced that I should totally fail in any other."

"We must not be so ready to fancy ourselves intentionally injured. We must not expect a lively young man to be always so guarded and circumspect. It is very often nothing but our own vanity that deceives us. Women fancy admiration means more than it does."

"Friendship is certainly the finest balm for the pangs of disappointed love."

"For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbors and laugh at them in our turn?"

"Every line, every word was - in the hackneyed metaphor which their dear writer, were she here, would forbid - a dagger to my heart. To know that Marianne was in town was - in the same language - a thunderbolt. - Thunderbolts and daggers! - what a reproof would she have given me! - her taste, her opinions - I believe they are better known to me than my own, - and I am sure they are dearer."

"You men have none of you any hearts.''If we have not hearts, we have eyes; and they give us torment enough."

"To wish was to hope, and to hope was to expect."

"Life seems but a quick succession of busy nothings."

"But above all, above respect and esteem, there was a motive within her of good will which could not be overlooked. 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. He who, she had been persuaded, would avoid her as his greatest enemy, seemed, on this accidental meeting, most eager to preserve the acquaintance, and without any indelicate display of regard, or any peculiarity of manner, where their two selves only were concerned, was soliciting the good opinion of her friends, and bent on making her known to his sister."

"What is right to be done cannot be done too soon."

"I have changed my mind, and changed the trimmings of my cap this morning; they are now such as you suggested."

"Every man is surrounded by a neighborhood of voluntary spies."

"I do not wish to avoid the walk. The distance is nothing when one has a motive."

"How much sooner one tires of anything than of a book!"

"But it was a matter of great consolation to her, that what brought evil to herself would bring good to her sister; and Elinor, on the other hand, suspecting that it would not be in her power to avoid Edward entirely, comforted herself by thinking, that though their longer stay would therefore militate against her own happiness, it would be better for Marianne than an immediate return into Devonshire."

"Upon my word, you five your opinion very decidedly for so young a person."

"Human nature is so well disposed towards those who are in interesting situations, that a young person, who either marries or dies, is sure of being kindly spoken of."

"Those who do not complain are never pitied."

"When shall I cease to regret you! When learn to feel a home elsewhere! Oh! Happy house, could you know what I suffer in now viewing you from this spot, from whence perhaps I may view you no more! And you, ye well-known trees! but you will continue the same. No leaf will decay because we are removed, nor any branch become motionless although we can observe you no longer! No; you will continue the same; unconscious of the pleasure or the regret you occasion, and insensible of any change in those who walk under your shade! But who will remain to enjoy you?"

"One half of the world cannot understand the pleasures of the other."

"How quick come the reasons for approving what we like!"

"Where an opinion is general, it is usually correct."

"She was happy, she knew she was happy, and knew she ought to be happy."

"I am now convinced that I have never been much in love; for had I really experienced that pure and elevating passion, I should at present detest his very name, and wish him all manner of evil. But my feelings are not only cordial towards him; they are even impartial towards her. I cannot find out that I hate her at all, or that I am in the least unwilling to think her a very good sort of girl. There can be no love in all this."

"Where people are really attached, poverty itself is wealth."

"Oh! you are a great deal too apt, you know, to like people in general. You never see fault in any body. All the world are good and agreeable in your eyes. I never heard you speak ill of a human being in my life.""I would wish not to be hasty in censuring any one; but I always speak what I think."

"Elinor had some difficulty here to refrain from observing, that she thought Fanny might have borne with composure, an acquisition of wealth to her brother, by which neither she nor her child could be possibly impoverished."

"Without music, life would be a blank to me."

"Vanity was the beginning and the end of Sir Walter Elliot's character; vanity of person and of situation. He had been remarkably handsome in his youth; and, at fifty-four, was still a very fine man. Few women could think more of their personal appearance than he did; nor could the valet of any new-made lord be more delighted with the place he held in society. He considered the blessing of beauty as inferior only to the blessing of a baronetcy; and the Sir Walter Elliot, who united these gifts, was the constant object of his warmest respect and devotion."

"Shyness is only the effect of a sense of inferiority in some way or other. If I could persuade myself that my manners were perfectly easy and graceful, I should not be shy."

"It would be most right, and most wise, and, therefore must involve least suffering."

"Young people do not like to be always thwarted."

"For my part, I am determined never to speak of it again to anybody. I told my sister Phillips so the other day."

"When I look out on such a night as this, I feel as if there could be neither wickedness nor sorrow in the world; and there certainly would be less of both if the sublimity of Nature were more attended to, and people were carried more out of themselves by contemplating such a scene."

"It is your turn to say something now, Mr. Darcy. I talked about the dance, and you ought to make some kind of remark on the size of the room, or the number of couples."

"Stupid men are the only ones worth knowing after all."

"My ideas flow so rapidly that I have not time to express them "€" by which means my letters sometimes convey no ideas at all to my correspondents."

"All the privilege I claim for my own sex (it is not a very enviable one, you need not covet it) is that of loving longest, when existence or when hope is gone."

"We do not suffer by accident."

"We have all a better guide in ourselves, if we would attend to it, than any other person can be."

"I must tell you what you will not ask, though I may wish it unsaid the next moment."

"She felt the loss of Willoughby's character yet more heavily than she had felt the loss of his heart."

"How often is happiness destroyed by preparation, foolish preparation!"

"Oh, Lizzy! do anything rather than marry without affection."

"Good-humoured, unaffected girls, will not do for a man who has been used to sensible women. They are two distinct orders of being."

"I could easily forgive his pride, if he had not mortified mine."

"A fondness for reading, properly directed, must be an education in itself."

"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."

"Vanity and pride are different things, though the words are often used synonymously. A person may be proud without being vain. Pride relates more to our opinion of ourselves; vanity, to what we would have others think of us."