“If I may, so long as the woman you love lives, and lives for you, all the privilege I claim for my own sex, and it is not a very enviable one - you need not covet it, is that of loving longest when all hope is gone.”

“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!”

“Oh!" cried Anne eagerly, "I hope I do justice to all that is felt by you,and by those who resemble you. God forbid that I should undervaluethe warm and faithful feelings of any of my fellow-creatures! I should deserve utter contempt if I dared to suppose that true attachmentand constancy were known only by woman. No, I believe you capableof everything great and good in your married lives. I believe you equalto every important exertion, and to every domestic forbearance,so long as--if I may be allowed the expression--so long as you havean object. I mean while the woman you love lives, and lives for you. 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 existenceor when hope is gone.”

“The one claim I shall make for my own sex is that we love longest, when all hope is gone.”

“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. ”

“Emma laughed, and replied: "But I had the assistance of all your endeavours to counteract the indulgence of other people. I doubt whether my own sense would have corrected me without it.""Do you?—I have no doubt. Nature gave you understanding:—Miss Taylor gave you principles. You must have done well. My interference was quite as likely to do harm as good. It was very natural for you to say, what right has he to lecture me?—and I am afraid very natural for you to feel that it was done in a disagreeable manner. I do not believe I did you any good. The good was all to myself, by making you an object of the tenderest affection to me. I could not think about you so much without doating on you, faults and all; and by dint of fancying so many errors, have been in love with you ever since you were thirteen at least. [...] "How often, when you were a girl, have you said to me, with one of your saucy looks—'Mr. Knightley, I am going to do so-and-so; papa says I may, or I have Miss Taylor's leave'—something which, you knew, I did not approve. In such cases my interference was giving you two bad feelings instead of one.""What an amiable creature I was!—No wonder you should hold my speeches in such affectionate remembrance.”

“You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope...I have loved none but you.”