Jane Austen

“She wished such words unsaid with all her heart”

“Yet some happiness must and would arise, from the very conviction, that he did suffer.”

“…but then I am unlike other people I dare say.”

“I fancy Miss Price has been more used to deserve praise than to hear it…”

“…when people are waiting, they are bad judges of time, and every half minute seems like five.”

“I am very strong. Nothing ever fatigues me, but doing what I do not like.”

“I can never be important to any one.''What is to prevent you?''Every thing — my situation — my foolishness and awkwardness.”

“Nobody meant to be unkind, but nobody put themselves out of their way to secure her comfort.”

“... and because they were fond of reading, she fancied them satirical: perhaps without exactly knowing what it was to be satirical; but that did not signify. It was censure in common use, and easily given.”

“On every formal visit a child ought to be of the party, by way of provision for discourse.”

“I should think he must be rather a dressy man for his time of life. Such a number of looking-glasses! Oh Lord! There is not getting away from one's self”

“No puedo concretar la hora, ni el sitio, ni la mirada, ni las palabras que pusieron los cimientos de mi amor. Hace bastante tiempo. Estaba ya medio enamorado de ti antes de saber que te quería - Mr. Darcy”

“There is no reason in the world why you should not be important where you are known. You have good sense, and a sweet temper, and I am sure you have a grateful heart, that could never receive kindness without hoping to return it. I do not know any better qualifications for a friend and companion.”

“... But he recommended the books which charmed her leisure hours, he encouraged her taste, and corrected her judgment; he made reading useful by talking to her of what she read, and heightened its attraction by judicious praise.”

“...when pain is over, the remembrance of it often becomes a pleasure.”

“Soon, however, she began to reason with herself, and try to be feeling less. Eight years, almost eight years had passed, since all had been given up. How absurd to be resuming the agitation which such an interval had banished into distance and indistinctness! What might not eight years do? Events of every description, changes, alienations, removals,--all, all must be comprised in it; and oblivion of the past--how natural, how certain too! It included nearly a third part of her own life. Alas! with all her reasonings, she found, that to retentive feelings eight years may be little more than nothing.”

“And so ended his affection," said Elizabeth impatiently. "There hasbeen many a one, I fancy, overcome in the same way. I wonder who firstdiscovered the efficacy of poetry in driving away love!""I have been used to consider poetry as the food of love," said Darcy.”

“Had I not been bound to silence I could have provided proof enough of a broken heart, even for you.”

“I never wish to offend, but I am so foolishly shy, that I often seem negligent, when I am only kept back by my natural awkwardness. [...] 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.”

“I will not say that your mulberry trees are dead; but I am afraid they're not alive. ”

“You see, I am a very prosaic, unromantic, sensible sort of fellow myself; and I have always had my heart set on finding the most sensible, prudent, level-headed wife in the world. But, on the other hand, it is very important to me that she possess one very particular flaw: she must have no sense whatsoever where I myself am concerned. She would only have to take one look at me and - no matter what her steadiness of mind - she would lose it in the space of seconds... Just lately, I have sometimes thought I may have found what I have always wanted. But just lately I have also noticed she has developed a most irritating habit of looking at the ground whenever we are together. Do you think she could try to overcome it? Well, Charlotte, are you going to look at me now?”

“In that moment, as they stood smiling at one another, Charlotte was conscious of several contradictory sensations, of which the chief were these: annoyance with herself for being incapable of governing her own actions, satisfaction that Sidney had won this very minor victory over her, amusement, embarrassment - an odd something between perturbation and pleasure - and above all else, a flutter of joyful spirits which made her feel she had strayed somehow into a most unfamiliar world.”

“If I had ever learnt, I should have been a great proficient.”

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

“General benevolence, but not general friendship, make a man what he ought to be.”

“Every body has their taste in noises as well as other matters; and sounds are quite innoxious, or most distressing, by their sort rather than their quantity.”

“A lady, without a family, was the very best preserver of furniture in the world.”

“You have qualities which I had not before supposed to exist in such a degree in any human creature. You have some touches of the angel in you.”

“Without music, life would be a blank to me.”

“Not keep a journal! How are your absent cousins to understand the tenor of your life in Bath without one? How are the civilities and compliments of every day to be related as they ought to be, unless noted down every evening in a journal? How are your various dresses to be remembered, and the particular state of your complexion, and curl of your hair to be described in all their diversities, without having constant recourse to a journal?”

“Every moment has its pleasures and its hope.”

“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.”

“Obstinate, headstrong girl!”

“Who can endure a Cabbage Bed in October? - 'Sanditon”

“Mr. Darcy began to feel the danger of paying Elizabeth too much attention.”

“I abhor every common-place phrase by which wit is intended”

“Pride is a very common failing, I believe. By all that I have ever read, I am convinced that it is very common indeed, that human nature is particularly prone to it, and that there are very few of us who do not cherish a feeling of self-complacency on the score of some quality or other, real or imaginary. Vanity and pride are different things, though the words are often used synonymously. A person may be proud without being vain. Pride relates to our opinion of ourselves, vanity to what would have others think of us.”

“At first sight, his address is certainly not striking; and his person can hardly be called handsome, till the expression of his eyes, which are uncommonly good, and the general sweetness of his countenance, is perceived.”

“How much sooner one tires of anything than of a book!”

“Yes, vanity is a weakness indeed. But pride - where there is a real superiority of mind, pride will be always under good regulation.”

“for everybody must now 'move in a circle', - to the prevalence of which rotatory motion, is perhaps to be attributed the giddiness and false steps of many.”

“The world had made him extravagant and vain - Extravagance and vanity had made him cold-hearted and selfish. Vanity, while seeking its own guilty triumph at the expense of another, had involved him in a real attachment, which extravagance, or at least its offspring, necessity, had required to be sacrificed. Each faulty propensity in leading him to evil, had led him likewise to punishment.”

“It is not time or opportunity that is to determine intimacy;—it is disposition alone. Seven years would be insufficient to make some people acquainted with each other, and seven days are more than enough for others.”

“Do you dance, Mr. Darcy?"Darcy: "Not if I can help it!"Sir William: "What a charming amusement for young people this is, Mr. Darcy! There is nothing like dancing, after all. I consider it as one of the first refinements of polished societies."Mr. Darcy: "Certainly, sir; and it has the advantage also of being in vogue amongst the less polished societies of the world; every savage can dance.”

“And to all this she must yet add something more substantial, in the improvement of her mind by extensive reading.”

“her spirits wanted the solitude and silence which only numbers could give.”

“It would be difficult to say which had seen highest perfection in the other, or which had been the happiest: she, in receiving his declarations and proposals, or he in having them accepted.”

“Vanity was the beginning and the end of Sir Walter Eliot's character; vanity of person and of situation.”

“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.”

“Nay," cried Bingley, "this is too much, to remember at night all the foolish things that were said in the morning.”