Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

"I am the happiest creature in the world. Perhaps other people have said so before, but not one with such justice. I am happier even than Jane; she only smiles, I laugh."

"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."

"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 could easily forgive his pride, if he had not mortified mine."

"She is tolerable, but not handsome enough to tempt me, and I am in no humor at present to give consequence to young ladies who are slighted by other men."

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

"In vain have I struggled. It will not do. My feelings will not be repressed. You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you."

"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."

"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."

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

"There certainly was some great mismanagement in the education of those two young men. One has got all the goodness, and the other all the appearance of it."

"I must learn to be content with being happier than I deserve."

"What are men to rocks and mountains?"

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

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

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

"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."

"I have been used to consider poetry as "the food of love"said Darcy."Of a fine, stout, healthy love it may. Everything nourishes what isstrong already. But if it be only a slight, thin sort of inclination, Iam convinced that one good sonnet will starve it entirely away."

"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."