Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

"My ideas flow so rapidly that I have not time to express them──by which means my letters sometimes convey no ideas at all to my correspondents."

"Elizabeth had never been more at a loss to make her feelings appear what they were not. It was necessary to laugh, when she would rather have cried."

"You may well warn me against such an evil. Human nature is so prone to fall into it!"

"Obstinate, headstrong girl!"

"We do not suffer by accident."

"Nobody can tell what I suffer! But it is always so. Those who do not complain are never pitied."

"But think no more of the letter. The feelings of the person who wrote, and the person who received it, are now so widely different from what they were then, that every unpleasant circumstance attending it ought to be forgotten. You must learn some of my philosophy. Think only of the past as its remembrance gives you pleasure."

"You must learn some of my philosophy. Think only of the past as its remembrance gives you pleasure."

"But above all, above respect and esteem, there was a motive within her of good will which could not be overlooked. It was gratitude. -- Gratitude, not merely for having once loved her, but for loving her still well enough, to forgive all the petulance and acrimony of her manner in rejecting him, and all the unjust accusations accompanying her rejection. He who, she had been persuaded, would avoid her as his greatest enemy, seemed, on this accidental meeting, most eager to preserve the acquaintance, and without any indelicate display of regard, or any peculiarity of manner, where their two selves only were concerned, was soliciting the good opinion of her friends, and bent on making her known to his sister."

"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."

"That would be the greatest misfortune of all! -- To find a man agreeable whom one is determined to hate! -- Do not wish me such an evil."

"What are men to rocks and mountains?"

"Adieu to disappointment and spleen. What are men to rocks and mountains?"

"We must not be so ready to fancy ourselves intentionally injured... It is very often nothing but our own vanity that deceives us."

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

"…she felt depressed beyond any thing she had ever known before."

"I do not play this instrument so well as I should wish to, but I have always supposed that to be my own fault because I would not take the trouble of practicing."

"He is a gentleman, and I am a gentleman's daughter. So far we are equal."

"Here are officers enough in Meryton to disappoint all the young ladies in the country."

"Miss Bingley's congratulations to her brother, on his approaching marriage, were all that was affectionate and insincere."