Jane Austen, Persuasion

"Men have had every advantage of us in telling their own story. Education has been theirs in so much higher a degree; the pen has been in their hands. I will not allow books to prove anything."

"I hate to hear you talk about all women as if they were fine ladies instead of rational creatures. None of us want to be in calm waters all our lives."

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

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

"...I will not allow books to prove any thing.""But how shall we prove any thing?""We never shall."

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

"she thought it was the misfortune of poetry, to be seldom safely enjoyed by those who enjoyed it completely; and that the strong feelings which alone could estimate it truly, were the very feelings which ought to taste it but sparingly."

"There could have been no two hearts so open, no tastes so similar, no feelings so in unison"

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

"Facts or opinions which are to pass through the hands of so many, to be misconceived by folly in one, and ignorance in another, can hardly have much truth left."

"Dare not say that man forgets sooner than woman, that his love has an earlier death."

"She had been forced into prudence in her youth, she learned romance as she grew older: the natural sequel of an unnatural beginning."