Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

"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."

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

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

"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."

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

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

"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."

"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."

"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)"

"Angry people are not always wise."

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

"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."

"What are men to rocks and mountains?"

"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."

"There is, I believe, in every disposition a tendency to some particular evil, a natural defect, which not even the best education can overcome.""And your defect is a propensity to hate everybody.""And yours,"he replied with a smile, "is wilfully to misunderstand them."

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

"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."

"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."

"my good qualities are under your protection, and you are to exaggerate them as much as possible; and, in return, it belongs to me to find occasion for teasing and quarreling with you as often as may be..."

"Books--oh! no. I am sure we never read the same, or not with the samefeelings.""I am sorry you think so; but if that be the case, there can at least beno want of subject. We may compare our different opinions."