Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

"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."

"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."

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

"Angry people are not always wise."

"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."

"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)"

"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."

"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."

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

"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."

"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."

"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."

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

"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."