Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

"There is a stubbornness about me that never can bear to be frightened at the will of others. My courage always rises at every attempt to intimidate me."

"Every impulse of feeling should be guided by reason; and, in my opinion, exertion should always be in proportion to what is required."

"I declare after all there is no enjoyment like reading! How much sooner one tires of any thing than of a book! -- When I have a house of my own, I shall be miserable if I have not an excellent library."

"We all know him to be a proud, unpleasant sort of man; but this would be nothing if you really liked him."

"Had I been in love, I could not have been more wretchedly blind. But vanity, not love, has been my folly."

"It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife."

"Angry people are not always wise."

"It is happy for you that you possess the talent of flattering with delicacy. May I ask whether these pleasing attentions proceed from the impulse of the moment, or are they the result of previous study?"

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

"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."

"You are mistaken, Mr. Darcy, if you suppose that the mode of your declaration affected me in any other way, than as it spared the concern which I might have felt in refusing you, had you behaved in a more gentlemanlike manner."(Elizabeth Bennett)"

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

"There are few people whom I really love, and still fewer of whom I think well. The more I see of the world, the more am I dissatisfied with it; and every day confirms my belief of the inconsistency of all human characters, and of the little dependence that can be placed on the appearance of merit or sense."

"Do not give way to useless alarm; though it is right to be prepared for the worst, there is no occasion to look on it as certain."

"I cannot fix on the hour, or the spot, or the look or the words, which laid the foundation. It is too long ago. I was in the middle before I knew that I had begun."

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

"What are men to rocks and mountains?"

"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."

"A lady's imagination is very rapid; it jumps from admiration to love, from love to matrimony in a moment."

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