Jane Austen

“We are each of an unsocial, taciturn disposition, unwilling to speak, unless we expect to say something that will amaze the whole room, and be handed down to posterity with all the eclat of a proverb.”

“Oh! write, write. Finish it at once. Let there be an end of this suspense. Fix, commit, condemn yourself.”

“The promised notification was hanging over her head. The postman's knock within the neighbourhood was beginning to bring its daily terrors -and if reading could banish the idea for even half an hour, it was something gained.”

“Shall I ask you how the church is to be filled, if a man is neither to take orders with a living, nor without?”

“It was told to me, it was in a manner forced on me by the very person herself whose prior engagement ruined all my prospects, and told me, as I thought, with triumph. This person's suspicions, therefore, I have had to oppose by endeavouring to appear indifferent where I have been most deeply interested; and it has not been only once; I have had her hopes and exultations to listen to again and again. I have known myself to be divided from Edward forever, without hearing one circumstance that could make me less desire the connection. Nothing has proved him unworthy; nor has anything declared him indifferent to me. I have had to content against the unkindness of his sister and the insolence of his mother, and have suffered the punishment of an attachment without enjoying its advantages. And all this has been going on at the time when, as you too well know, it has not been my only unhappiness. If you can think me capable of ever feeling, surely you may suppose that I have suffered now.”

“It was a gloomy prospect, and all that she could do was to throw a mist over it, and hope when the mist cleared away, she should see something else.”

“I encourage him to be in his garden as often as possible. Then he has to walk to Rosings nearly every day. ... I admit I encourage him in that also.”

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

“Do you talk by rule, then, while you are dancing?"Sometimes. One must speak a little, you know. It would look odd to be entirely silent for half an hour together, and yet for the advantage of some, conversation ought to be so arranged as that they may have the trouble of saying as little as possible.”

“A submissive spirit might be patient, a strong understanding would supply resolution, but here was something more; here was that elasticity of mind, that disposition to be comforted, that power of turning readily from evil to good, and of finding employment which carried her out of herself, which was from nature alone. It was the choicest gift of Heaven; and Anne viewed her friend as one of those instances in which, by a merciful appointment, it seems designed to counterbalance almost every other want.”

“I will be calm. I will be mistress of myself.”

“If the heroine of one novel be not patronized by the heroine of another, from whom can she expect protection and regard?”

“Whether she thought of him so much, while she drank her warm wine and water, and prepared herself for bed, as to dream of him when there, cannot be ascertained; but I hope it was no more than in a slight slumber, or a morning doze at most; for if it be true, as a celebrated writer has maintained, that no young lady can be justified in falling in love before the gentleman's love is declared, it must be very improper that a young lady should dream of a gentleman before the gentleman is first known to have dreamt of her.”

“This sweetest and best of all creatures, faultless in spite of all her faults.”

“At ten, she was moreover noisy and wild, hated confinement and cleanliness and loved nothing so well in the world as rolling down the green slope at the back of the house. At fifteen, appearances were mending; she began to curl her hair and long for balls; her complexion improved, her features were softened by plumpness and colour, her eyes gained more animation, and her figure more consequence. Her love of dirt gave away to inclination for finery, and she grew clean as she grew smart. To look almost pretty, is an acquisition of higher delight to a girl who has been looking plain the first fifteen years of her life, than a beauty from her cradle can ever imagine.”

“In addition to what has been already said of Catherine Morland's personal and mental endowments, when about to be launched into all the difficulties and dangers of a six weeks' residence in Bath, it may be stated, for the reader's more certain information, lest the following pages should otherwise fail of giving any idea of what her character is meant to be; that her heart was affectionate, her disposition cheerful and open, without conceit or affectation of any kind - her manners just removed from the awkwardness and shyness of a girl; her person pleasing, and, when in good looks, pretty - and her mind about as ignorant and uninformed as the female mind at seventeen usually is.”

“Ah! what could we do but what we did! We sighed and fainted on the Sofa.”

“Her eye fell everywhere on lawns and plantations of the freshest green; and the trees, though not fully clothed, were in that delightful state when farther beauty is known to be at hand, and when, while much is actually given to the sight, more yet remains for the imagination.”

“Captain Harvile: Poor Phoebe, she would not have forgotten him so soon. It was not in her nature. Anne Elliot: It would not be in the nature of any woman who truly loved. Captain Harvile: Do you claim that for your sex? Anne Elliot: We do not forget you as soon as you forget us. We cannot help ourselves. We live at home, quiet, confined, and our feelings prey upon us. You always have business of some sort or other to take you back into the world. Captain Harvile: I won't allow it to be any more man's nature than women's to be inconstant or to forget those they love or have loved. I believe the reverse. I believe... Let me just observe that all histories are against you, all stories, prose, and verse. I do not think I ever opened a book in my life which did not have something to say on women's fickleness. Anne Elliot: But they were all written by men. ”

“I saw you thro' a telescope and was so struck by your Charms that from that time to this I have not tasted human food.”

“She was convinced that she could have been happy with him, when it was no longer likely they should meet.”

“They parted at last with mutual civility, and possibly a mutual desire of never meeting again.”

“She attracted him more than he liked.”

“There, he had seen every thing to exalt in his estimation the woman he had lost, and there begun to deplore the pride, the folly, the madness of resentment, which had kept him from trying to regain her when thrown in his way.”

“Thus much indeed he was obliged to acknowledge - that he had been constant unconsciously, nay unintentionally; that he had meant to forget her, and believed it to be done. He had imagined himself indifferent, when he had only been angry; and he had been unjust to her merits, because he had been a sufferer from them.”

“We certainly do not forget you, so soon as you forget us. It is, perhaps, our fate rather than our merit. We cannot help ourselves.”

“The last few hours were certainly very painful," replied Anne: "but when pain is over, the remembrance of it often becomes a pleasure. One does not love a place the less for having suffered in it, unless it has been all suffering, nothing but suffering-”

“She understood him. He could not forgive her,-but he could not be unfeeling. Though condemning her for the past, and considering it with high and unjest resentment, though perfectly careless of her, and though becoming attached to another, still he could not see her suffer, without the desire of giving her relief. It was a remainder of former sentiment; it was an impuse of pure, though unacknowledged friendship; it was a proof of his own warm and amiable heart, which she could not contemplate without emotions so compounded of pleasure and pain, that she knew not which prevailed.”

“His cold politeness, his ceremonious grace, were worse than anything.”

“She would have liked to know how he felt as to a meeting. Perhaps indifferent, if indifference could exist under such circumstances. He must be either indifferent or unwilling. Has he wished ever to see her again, he need not have waited till this time; he would have done what she could not but believe that in his place she should have done long ago, when events had been early giving him the indepencence which alone had been wanting.”

“Husbands and wives generally understand when opposition will be vain.”

“Lady Jane Gray, who tho' inferior to her lovely Cousin the Queen of Scots, was yet an amiable young woman & famous for reading Greek while other people were hunting....Whether she really understood that language or whether such a study proceeded only from an excess of vanity for which I beleive she was always rather remarkable, is uncertain.”

“No- I cannot talk of books in a ballroom; my head is always full of something else.”

“Next to being married, a girl likes being crossed in love a little now and again.”

“Perfect happiness, even in memory, is not common.”

“But remember that the pain of parting from friends will be felt by every body at times, whatever be their education or state.”

“Prepare yourself for something dreadful.”

“There is exquisite pleasure in subduing an insolent spirit, in making a person pre-determined to dislike, acknowledge one's superiority.”

“Charles Adams was an amiable, accomplished & bewitching young Man; of so dazzling a Beauty that none but Eagles could look him in the Face.”

“She has many rare and charming qualities, but Sobriety is not one of them.”

“Good apple pies are a considerable part of our domestic happiness.”

“I am determined that nothing but the deepest love could ever induce me into matrimony. [Elizabeth]”

“I pay very little regard," said Mrs. Grant, "to what any young person says on the subject of marriage. If they profess a disinclination for it, I only set it down that they have not yet seen the right person.”

“A natural sequel of an unnatural beginning.”

“One word from you shall silence me forever.”

“…her mind about as ignorant and uninformed as the female mind at seventeen usually is.”

“Jedna połowa ludzi na świecie nie potrafi zrozumieć, dlaczego drugiej połowie coś sprawia przyjemność.”

“Every man is surrounded by a neighborhood of voluntary spies.”

“I cannot say much for this Monarch's Sense--Nor would I if I could, for he was a Lancastrian. I suppose you know all about the Wars between him and the Duke of York who was on the right side; if you do not, you had better read some other History, for I shall not be very difuse in this, meaning by it only to vent my spleen against, and show my Hatred to all those people whose parties or principles do not suit with mine, and not to give information.”

“There was certainly at this moment, in Elizabeth's mind, a more gentle sensation towards the original, that she had ever felt in the height of their acquaintance.Elizabeth's changing relationship with Darcy on first visit to Pemberley, Chapter 43.”