Jane Austen Quotes

“Follies and nonsense, whims and inconsistencies, do divert me, I own, and I laugh at them whenever I can.”

“Their eyes instantly met, and the cheeks of both were overspread with the deepest blush.”

“Do not consider me now as an elegant female, intending to play you, but as a rational creature, speaking the truth from her heart.”

“Nothing is more deceitful…than the appearance of humility. It is often only carelessness of opinion, and sometimes an indirect boast.”

“To be fond of dancing was a certain step towards falling in love.”

“Those who do not complain are never pitied.”

“For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbors, and laugh at them in our turn?”

“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.”

“Angry people are not always wise.”

“From the very beginning—from the first moment, I may almost say—of my acquaintance with you, your manners, impressing me with the fullest belief of your arrogance, your conceit, and your selfish distain of the feelings of others, were such as to form the groundwork of the disapprobation on which succeeding events have built so immovable a dislike; and I had not known you a month before I felt that you were the last man in the world on whom I could ever be prevailed on to marry.”

“There is nothing so bad as parting with one’s friends. One seems too forlorn without them.”

“You showed me how insufficient were all my pretensions to please a woman worthy of being pleased.”

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

“My good opinion once lost, is lost forever.”

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

“But people themselves alter so much, that there is something new to be observed in them for ever.”

“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 only resolved to act in that manner, which will, in my own opinion, constitute my happiness, without reference to you, or to any person so wholly unconnected with me.”

“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.”

“Till this moment I never knew myself.”

“A person who can write a long letter with ease, cannot write ill.”

“Is not general incivility the very essence of love?”

“The distance is nothing when one has motive.”

“Think only of the past as its remembrance gives you pleasure.”

“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 the result of previous study?”

“One cannot be always laughing at a man without now and then stumbling on something witty.”

“Your defect is a propensity to hate everybody.” “And yours,” he replied with a smile, “is willfully to misunderstand them.”

“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.”

“There is, I believe, in every disposition a tendency to some particular evil—a natural defect, which not even the best education can overcome.”

“Do anything rather than marry without affection.”

“What are men to rocks and mountains?”

“She was convinced that she could have been happy with him, when it was no longer likely they should meet.”

“A girl likes to be crossed a little in love now and then.”

In vain I have 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.

“It isn’t what we say or think that defines us, but what we do.”

“Life seems but a quick succession of busy nothings.”

“What strange creatures brothers are!”

“There is no charm equal to tenderness of heart.”

“Laugh as much as you choose, but you will not laugh me out of my opinion.”

“There are people, who the more you do for them, the less they will do for themselves.”

“There is nothing I would not do for those who are really my friends. I have no notion of loving people by halves, it is not my nature.”

“When I fall in love, it will be forever.”

“A woman, especially if she have the misfortune of knowing anything, should conceal it as well as she can.”

“My idea of good company...is the company of clever, well-informed people, who have a great deal of conversation; that is what I call good company.′ ‘You are mistaken,’ said he gently, ‘that is not good company, that is the best.”

“I wish, as well as everybody else, to be perfectly happy; but, like everybody else, it must be in my own way.”

“...when pain is over, the remembrance of it often becomes a pleasure.”

“If adventures will not befall a young lady in her own village, she must seek them abroad.”

“She was sensible and clever, but eager in everything; her sorrows, her joys, could have no moderation.”

“You must be the best judge of your own happiness.”

“Run mad as often as you choose, but do not faint!”

“Time will explain.”

“One half of the world cannot understand the pleasures of the other.”

“A man does not recover from such devotion of the heart to such a woman! He ought not; he does not.”

“She hoped to be wise and reasonable in time; but alas! Alas! She must confess to herself that she was not wise yet.”

“I will be calm. I will be mistress of myself.”

“There could have been no two hearts so open, no tastes so similar, no feelings so in unison”

“The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid.”

“One man’s ways may be as good as another’s, but we all like our own best.”

“It’s been many years since I had such an exemplary vegetable.”

“I cannot make speeches, Emma...If I loved you less, I might be able to talk about it more. But you know what I am. You hear nothing but truth from me. I have blamed you, and lectured you, and you have borne it as no other woman in England would have borne it.”

“I cannot speak well enough to be unintelligible.”

“Silly things do cease to be silly if they are done by sensible people in an impudent way.”

“Seldom, very seldom, does complete truth belong to any human disclosure; seldom can it happen that something is not a little disguised or a little mistaken.”

“Which of all my important nothings shall I tell you first?”

“Nothing ever fatigues me, but doing what I do not like.”

“Without music, life would be a blank to me.”

“You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope...I have loved none but you.”

“Friendship is certainly the finest balm for the pangs of disappointed love.”

“But for my own part, if a book is well written, I always find it too short.”

If I was wrong in yielding to persuasion once, remember that it was to persuasion exerted on the side of safety, not of risk. When I yielded, I thought it was to duty; but no duty could be called in aid here. In marrying a man indifferent to me, all risk would have been incurred and all duty violated.

I may have lost my heart, but not my self-control.

How quick come the reasons for approving what we like.

Blessed with so many resources within myself the world was not necessary to me. I could do very well without it.

“Know your own happiness. You want nothing but patience- or give it a more fascinating name, call it hope.”

She was stronger alone; and her own good sense so well supported her, that her firmness was as unshaken, her appearance of cheerfulness as invariable, as, with regrets so poignant and so fresh, it was possible for them to be.

Money can only give happiness where there is nothing else to give it.

When any two young people take it into their heads to marry, they are pretty sure by perseverance to carry their point, be they ever so poor, or ever so imprudent, or ever so little likely to be necessary to each other’s ultimate comfort.

Men of sense, whatever you may choose to say, do not want silly wives.

Thus much indeed he was obliged to acknowledge – that he had been constant unconsciously, nay unintentionally; that he had meant to forget her, and believed it to be done. He had imagined himself indifferent, when he had only been angry; and he had been unjust to her merits, because he had been a sufferer from them.

Nor could she help feeling, on more serious reflection, that, like many other great moralists and preachers, she had been eloquent on a point in which her own conduct would ill bear examination.

General benevolence, but not general friendship, make a man what he ought to be.

Marianne Dashwood was born to an extraordinary fate. She was born to discover the falsehood of her own opinions, and to counteract, by her conduct, her most favourite maxims. She was born to overcome an affection formed so late in life as at seventeen, and with no sentiment superior to strong esteem and lively friendship, voluntarily to give her hand to another! -- and that other, a man who had suffered no less than herself under the event of a former attachment, -- whom, two years before, she had considered too old to be married, -- and who still sought the constitutional safeguard of a flannel waistcoat!

Miss Bates had never boasted either beauty or cleverness. Her youth had passed without distinction, and her middle of life was devoted to the care of a failing mother, and the endeavor to make a small income go as far as possible. And yet she was a happy woman, and a woman whom no one named without good will.

Vanity working on a weak head produces every sort of mischief.

I do not think I ever opened a book in my life which had not something to say upon woman’s inconstancy. Songs and proverbs, all talk of woman’s fickleness. But perhaps you will say, these were all written by men.

Never could I expect to be so truly beloved and important; so always first and always right in any man’s eyes as I am in my father’s.

Better be without sense than misapply it as you do.

Now they were as strangers; worse than strangers, for they could never become acquainted.

She understood him. He could not forgive her,-but he could not be unfeeling. Though condemning her for the past, and considering it with high and unjest resentment, though perfectly careless of her, and though becoming attached to another, still he could not see her suffer, without the desire of giving her relief. It was a remainder of former sentiment; it was an impuse of pure, though unacknowledged friendship; it was a proof of his own warm and amiable heart, which she could not contemplate without emotions so compounded of pleasure and pain, that she knew not which prevailed.

“I wish, as well as everybody else, to be perfectly happy; but, like everybody else, it must be in my own way.”

“It is not everyone,′ said Elinor, ‘who has your passion for dead leaves.”

Sometimes one is guided by what they say of themselves, and very frequently by what other people say of them, without giving oneself time to deliberate and judge.

Brandon is just the kind of man whom every body speaks well of, and nobody cares about; whom all are delighted to see, and nobody remembers to talk to.

There is one thing, Emma, which a man can always do if he chooses, and that is his duty; not by manoeuvring and finessing, but by vigour and resolution.

Seldom, very seldom, does complete truth belong to any human disclosure; seldom can it happen that something is not a little disguised or a little mistaken.

“I certainly must,′ said she. ‘This sensation of listlessness, weariness, stupidity, this disinclination to sit down and employ myself, this feeling of everything’s being dull and insipid about the house! I must be in love; I should be the oddest creature in the world if I were not.”

If there is any thing disagreeable going on, men are always sure to get out of it.

Anne hoped she had outlived the age of blushing; but the age of emotion she certainly had not.

“Always resignation and acceptance. Always prudence and honour and duty. Elinor, where is your heart?”

“I have not wanted syllables where actions have spoken so plainly.”

I always deserve the best treatment, because I never put up with any other.

I lay it down as a general rule, Harriet, that if a woman doubts as to whether she should accept a man or not, she certainly ought to refuse him.

She had nothing to wish otherwise, but that the days did not pass so swiftly. It was a delightful visit;—perfect, in being much too short.

I can listen no longer in silence. I must speak to you by such means as are within my reach. You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope. Tell me not that I am too late, that such precious feelings are gone for ever. I offer myself to you again with a heart even more your own than when you almost broke it, eight years and a half ago.

“It is not time or opportunity that is to determine intimacy;—it is disposition alone. Seven years would be insufficient to make some people acquainted with each other, and seven days are more than enough for others.”

Let us never underestimate the power of a well-written letter.

A woman is not to marry a man merely because she is asked, or because he is attached to her, and can write a tolerable letter.

Dare not say that man forgets sooner than woman, that his love has an earlier death.

She felt that she could so much more depend upon the sincerity of those who sometimes looked or said a careless or a hasty thing, than of those whose presence of mind never varied, whose tongue never slipped.

“If I could but know his heart, everything would become easy.”

To wish was to hope, and to hope was to expect.

It is very difficult for the prosperous to be humble.

“The more I know of the world, the more I am convinced that I shall never see a man whom I can really love. I require so much!”

For though a very few hours spent in hard labour of incessant talking will dispatch more subjects than can really be in common between any two rational creatures, yet with lovers it is different. Between them no subject is finished, no communication is even made, till it has been made at least twenty times over.

How often is happiness destroyed by preparation, foolish preparation!

Surprises are foolish things. The pleasure is not enhanced, and the inconvenience is often considerable.

“The last few hours were certainly very painful,” replied Anne: “but when pain is over, the remembrance of it often becomes a pleasure. One does not love a place the less for having suffered in it, unless it has been all suffering, nothing but suffering-”

Elinor agreed to it all, for she did not think he deserved the compliment of rational opposition.

″. . . though where so many hours have been spent in convincing myself that I am right, is there not some reason to fear I may be wrong?”

I hate to hear you talk about all women as if they were fine ladies instead of rational creatures. None of us want to be in calm waters all our lives.

All the privilege I claim for my own sex (it is not a very enviable one: you need not covet it), is that of loving longest, when existence or when hope is gone!

She was without any power, because she was without any desire of command over herself.

“There is something so amiable in the prejudices of a young mind, that one is sorry to see them give way to the reception of more general opinions.”

“He admires as a lover, not as a connoisseur. To satisfy me, those characters must be united. I could not be happy with a man whose taste did not in every point coincide with my own. He must enter into all my feelings; the same books, the same music must charm us both.”

He then departed, to make himself still more interesting, in the midst of a heavy rain.

“Here’s harmony!” said she; “here’s repose! Here’s what may leave all painting and all music behind, and what poetry only can attempt to describe! Here’s what may tranquilize every care, and lift the heart to rapture! When I look out on such a night as this, I feel as if there could be neither wickedness nor sorrow in the world; and there certainly would be less of both if the sublimity of Nature were more attended to, and people were carried more out of themselves by contemplating such a scene.”

“I think it ought not to be set down as certain that a man must be acceptable to every woman he may happen to like himself.”

If reading could banish the idea for even half an hour, it was something gained.

“You must really begin to harden yourself to the idea of being worth looking at.”

I only entreat everybody to believe that exactly at the time when it was quite natural that it should be so, and not a week earlier, Edmund did cease to care about Miss Crawford, and became as anxious to marry Fanny as Fanny herself could desire.

“There will be little rubs and disappointments everywhere, and we are all apt to expect too much; but then, if one scheme of happiness fails, human nature turns to another; if the first calculation is wrong, we make a second better: we find comfort somewhere.”

“I am very strong. Nothing ever fatigues me but doing what I do not like.”

Every moment had its pleasure and its hope.

“I speak what appears to me the general opinion; and where an opinion is general, it is usually correct.”

Henry Crawford had too much sense not to feel the worth of a good principles in a wife, though he was to little accustomed to serious reflection to know them by their proper name.

“When people are waiting, they are bad judges of time, and every half minute seems like five.”

A large income is the best recipe for happiness I ever heard of.

“Everybody likes to go their own way—to choose their own time and manner of devotion.”

“There, I will stake my last like a woman of spirit. No cold prudence for me. I am not born to sit still and do nothing. If I lose the game, it shall not be from not striving or it”

“If any one faculty of our nature may be called more wonderful than the rest, I do think it is memory. There seems something more speakingly incomprehensible in the powers, the failures, the inequalities of memory, than in any other of our intelligences. The memory is sometimes so retentive, so serviceable, so obedient; at others, so bewildered and so weak; and at others again, so tyrannic, so beyond control! We are, to be sure, a miracle every way; but our powers of recollecting and of forgetting do seem peculiarly past finding out.”

Let other pens dwell on guilt and misery.

Selfishness must always be forgiven, you know, because there is no hope of a cure.

“A watch is always too fast or too slow. I cannot be dictated to by a watch.”

“I cannot think well of a man who sports with any woman’s feelings; and there may often be a great deal more suffered than a stander-by can judge of.”

“To sit in the shade on a fine day, and look upon verdure, is the most perfect refreshment.”

Her own thoughts and reflections were habitually her best companions.

“Don’t imagine that nobody in this house can see or judge but yourself. Don’t act yourself, if you do not like it, but don’t expect to govern everybody else.”

“You have qualities which I had not before supposed to exist in such a degree in any human creature. You have some touches of the angel in you beyond what—not merely beyond what one sees, because one never sees anything like it—but beyond what one fancies might be. ”

She had probably alienated love by the helplessness and fretfulness of a fearful temper, or been unreasonable in wanting a larger share than any one among so many could deserve

Strange things may be generally accounted for if their cause be fairly searched out.

And from the whole she deduced this useful lesson, that to go previously engaged to a ball, does not necessarily increase either the dignity or enjoyment of a young lady.

What one means one day, you know, one may not mean the next. Circumstances change, opinions alter.

If a rainy morning deprived them of other enjoyments, they were still resolute in meeting in defiance of wet and dirt, and shut themselves up, to read novels together.

Wherever you are you should always be contented, but especially at home, because there you must spend the most of your time.

No man is offended by another man’s admiration of the woman he loves; it is the woman only who can make it a torment.

I am delighted with the book! I should like to spend my whole life in reading it. I assure you, if it had not been to meet you, I would not have come away from it for all the world.

“Beware how you give your heart.”

A young woman in love always looks like Patience on a monument Smiling at Grief

Now I must give one smirk and then we may be rational again.

Where people are really attached, poverty itself is wealth.

If I could not be persuaded into doing what I thought wrong, I will never be tricked into it.

Where the heart is really attached, I know very well how little one can be pleased with the attention of any body else.

I leave it to be settled, by whomsoever it may concern, whether the tendency of this work be altogether to recommend parental tyranny, or reward filial disobedience.

It is so delightful to have an evening now and then to oneself.

Woman is fine for her own satisfaction alone.

She was heartily ashamed of her ignorance - a misplaced shame. Where people wish to attach, they should always be ignorant. To come with a well−informed mind is to come with an inability of administering to the vanity of others, which a sensible person would always wish to avoid. A woman especially, if she have the misfortune of knowing anything, should conceal it as well as she can.

From fifteen to seventeen she was in training for a heroine.

As for admiration, it was always very welcome when it came, but she did not depend on it.

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

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

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

The power of doing anything with quickness is always prized much by the possessor, and often without any attention to the imperfection of the performance.

I have faults enough, but they are not, I hope, of understanding. My temper I dare not vouch for. It is, I believe, too little yielding— certainly too little for the convenience of the world. I cannot forget the follies and vices of other so soon as I ought, nor their offenses against myself. My feelings are not puffed about with every attempt to move them. My temper would perhaps be called resentful. My good opinion once lost, is lost forever.

I am happier even than Jane; she only smiles, I laugh. Mr. Darcy sends you all the love in the world that he can spare from me.

Your conjecture is totally wrong, I assure you. My mind was more agreeably engaged. I have been meditating on the very great pleasure which a pair of fine eyes in the face of a pretty woman can bestow.

I was given good principles, but left to follow them in pride and conceit.

I must learn to brook being happier than I deserve.

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.

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

Mr. Darcy soon drew the attention of the room by his fine, tall person, handsome features, noble mien, and the report which was in general circulation within five minutes after his entrance, of his having ten thousand a year. The gentlemen pronounced him to be a fine figure of a man, the ladies declared he was much handsomer than Mr. Bingley, and he was looked at with great admiration for about half the evening, till his manners gave a disgust which turned the tide of his popularity; for he was discovered to be proud; to be above his company, and above being pleased; and not all his large estate in Derbyshire could then save him from having a most forbidding, disagreeable countenance, and being unworthy to be compared with his friend.

“All this she must possess,” added Darcy, “and to all this she must yet add something more substantial, in the improvement of her mind by extensive reading.”

You are too generous to trifle with me. If your feelings are still what they were last April, tell me so at once. My affections and wishes are unchanged; but one word from you will silence me on this subject for ever.

“I have not the smallest objection to explaining them,” said he, as soon as she allowed him to speak. “You either choose this method of passing the evening because you are in each other’s confidence, and have secret affairs to discuss, or because you are conscious that your figures appear to the greatest advantage in walking; if the first, I would be completely in your way, and if the second, I can admire you much better as I sit by the fire.”

“If you will thank me,” he replied, “let it be for yourself alone. That the wish of giving happiness to you might add force to the other inducements which led me on, I shall not attempt to deny. But your family owe me nothing. Much as I respect them, I believe I thought only of you.”

“I remember hearing you once say, Mr. Darcy, that you hardly ever forgave, that your resentment once created was unappeasable. You are very cautious, I suppose, as to its being created.” “I am,” said he, with a firm voice. “And never allow yourself to be blinded by prejudice?” “I hope not.”

“To be fond of dancing was a certain step towards falling in love.”

“Jane Austen did not become one of the most renowned authors in the English language by having her characters dye their armpit hair and join a lesbian commune.”

“Only Jane Austen did it and Emily Brontë. It is another feather, perhaps the finest, in their caps. They wrote as women write, not as men write. Of all the thousand women who wrote novels then, they alone entirely ignored the perpetual admonitions of the eternal pedagogue—write this, think that. ”

“‘Sometimes it’s an advantage to be disadvantaged,’ said Harry.”

“People in books are good and noble and unselfish, and people aren’t that way ... and I feel, well… hornswoggled sometimes. By Jane Austen and Charles Dickens and Louisa May Alcott. Why do writers make things sugary when life isn’t that way?”

″‘How I wish I lived in a Jane Austen novel!’ I said I’d rather be in a Charlotte Bronte. ‘Which would be nicest- Jane with a touch of Charlotte, or Charlotte with a touch of Jane.‘”

“You want to tell me, and I have no objection to hearing it.”

“You mistake me, my dear. I have a high respect for your nerves. They are my old friends. I have heard you mention them with consideration these twenty years at least.”

“We are not in a way to know what Mr. Bingley likes,” said her mother resentfully, “since we are not to visit.”

“I do not believe Mrs. Long will do any such thing. She has two nieces of her own. She is a selfish, hypocritical woman, and I have no opinion of her.”

“Don’t keep coughing so, Kitty, for heaven’s sake! Have a little compassion on my nerves. You tear them to pieces.”

“Kitty has no discretion in her coughs,” said her father; “she times them ill.”

One cannot know what a man really is by the end of a fortnight.

“What say you, Mary? for you are a young lady of deep reflection I know, and read great books, and make extracts.” Mary wished to say something very sensible, but knew not how.

“Now, Kitty, you may cough as much as you choose,” said Mr. Bennet; and, as he spoke, he left the room, fatigued with the raptures of his wife.

“If I can but see one of my daughters happily settled at Netherfield,” said Mrs. Bennet to her husband, “and all the others equally well married, I shall have nothing to wish for.”

“Come, Darcy,” said he, “I must have you dance. I hate to see you standing about by yourself in this stupid manner. You had much better dance.”

“Oh! she is the most beautiful creature I ever beheld! But there is one of her sisters sitting down just behind you, who is very pretty, and I dare say, very agreeable. Do let me ask my partner to introduce you.”

“You had better return to your partner and enjoy her smiles, for you are wasting your time with me.”

Jane was so admired, nothing could be like it. Everybody said how well she looked; and Mr. Bingley thought her quite beautiful, and danced with her twice.

I know you do; and it is that which makes the wonder. With your good sense, to be so honestly blind to the follies and nonsense of others! Affectation of candour is common enough;⁠—one meets it everywhere. But to be candid without ostentation or design⁠—to take the good of everybody’s character and make it still better, and say nothing of the bad⁠—belongs to you alone.

“You began the evening well, Charlotte,” said Mrs. Bennet with civil self-command to Miss Lucas. “You were Mr. Bingley’s first choice.” “Yes;⁠—but he seemed to like his second better.”

I beg you would not put it into Lizzy’s head to be vexed by his ill-treatment; for he is such a disagreeable man that it would be quite a misfortune to be liked by him.

“His pride,” said Miss Lucas, “does not offend me so much as pride often does, because there is an excuse for it. One cannot wonder that so very fine a young man, with family, fortune, everything in his favour, should think highly of himself. If I may so express it, he has a right to be proud.”

“If a woman conceals her affection with the same skill from the object of it, she may lose the opportunity of fixing him;

In nine cases out of ten, a woman had better show more affection than she feels.

I wish Jane success with all my heart; and if she were married to him tomorrow, I should think she had as good a chance of happiness, as if she were to be studying his character for a twelvemonth.

Happiness in marriage is entirely a matter of chance. If the dispositions of the parties are ever so well known to each other, or ever so similar beforehand, it does not advance their felicity in the least.

Mr. Darcy, you must allow me to present this young lady to you as a very desirable partner. You cannot refuse to dance, I am sure, when so much beauty is before you.

“If my children are silly I must hope to be always sensible of it.”

I do not like to boast of my own child, but to be sure, Jane⁠—one does not often see anybody better looking.

“I hope, my dear,” said Mr. Bennet to his wife, as they were at breakfast the next morning, “that you have ordered a good dinner today, because I have reason to expect an addition to our family party.”

“About a month ago I received this letter, and about a fortnight ago I answered it, for I thought it a case of some delicacy, and requiring early attention. It is from my cousin, Mr. Collins, who, when I am dead, may turn you all out of this house as soon as he pleases.”

They arise chiefly from what is passing at the time, and though I sometimes amuse myself with suggesting and arranging such little elegant compliments as may be adapted to ordinary occasions, I always wish to give them as unstudied an air as possible.

“I have often observed how little young ladies are interested by books of a serious stamp, though written solely for their benefit. It amazes me, I confess;⁠—for certainly, there can be nothing so advantageous to them as instruction. But I will no longer importune my young cousin.”

“You may well be surprised, Miss Bennet, at such an assertion, after seeing, as you probably might, the very cold manner of our meeting yesterday. Are you much acquainted with Mr. Darcy?” “As much as I ever wish to be,” cried Elizabeth warmly⁠—“I have spent four days in the same house with him, and I think him very disagreeable.”

I have been a disappointed man, and my spirits will not bear solitude.

My dearest Lizzy, do but consider in what a disgraceful light it places Mr. Darcy, to be treating his father’s favourite in such a manner⁠—one, whom his father had promised to provide for. It is impossible. No man of common humanity, no man who had any value for his character, could be capable of it. Can his most intimate friends be so excessively deceived in him? oh! no.

“I can much more easily believe Mr. Bingley’s being imposed on, than that Mr. Wickham should invent such a history of himself as he gave me last night; names, facts, everything mentioned without ceremony. If it be not so, let Mr. Darcy contradict it. Besides, there was truth in his looks.”

“Heaven forbid!⁠—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.”

“It is your turn to say something now, Mr. Darcy. I talked about the dance, and you ought to make some kind of remark on the size of the room, or the number of couples.”

“We are each of an unsocial, taciturn disposition, unwilling to speak, unless we expect to say something that will amaze the whole room, and be handed down to posterity with all the éclat of a proverb.”

“Whatever I do is done in a hurry,” replied he; “and therefore if I should resolve to quit Netherfield, I should probably be off in five minutes. At present, however, I consider myself as quite fixed here.”

“Nothing is more deceitful,” said Darcy, “than the appearance of humility. It is often only carelessness of opinion, and sometimes an indirect boast.”

I have more than once observed to Lady Catherine, that her charming daughter seemed born to be a duchess, and that the most elevated rank, instead of giving her consequence, would be adorned by her. These are the kind of little things which please her ladyship, and it is a sort of attention which I conceive myself peculiarly bound to pay.

“From all that I can collect by your manner of talking, you must be two of the silliest girls in the country. I have suspected it some time, but I am now convinced.”

I remember the time when I liked a red coat myself very well⁠—and indeed so I do still at my heart; and if a smart young colonel, with five or six thousand a year, should want one of my girls, I shall not say nay to him;

“Well, my dear,” said Mr. Bennet, when Elizabeth had read the note aloud, “if your daughter should have a dangerous fit of illness, if she should die, it would be a comfort to know that it was all in pursuit of Mr. Bingley, and under your orders.”

“When I am in the country,” he replied, “I never wish to leave it; and when I am in town it is pretty much the same. They have each their advantages, and I can be equally happy in either.”

“Miss Eliza Bennet, let me persuade you to follow my example, and take a turn about the room. I assure you it is very refreshing after sitting so long in one attitude.”

She has the reputation of being remarkably sensible and clever; but I rather believe she derives part of her abilities from her rank and fortune, part from her authoritative manner, and the rest from the pride of her nephew, who chooses that everyone connected with him should have an understanding of the first class.”

“Are you consulting your own feelings in the present case, or do you imagine that you are gratifying mine?”

“My dear Miss Elizabeth, I have the highest opinion in the world of your excellent judgment in all matters within the scope of your understanding, but permit me to say that there must be a wide difference between the established forms of ceremony amongst the laity, and those which regulate the clergy; for give me leave to observe that I consider the clerical office as equal in point of dignity with the highest rank in the kingdom⁠—provided that a proper humility of behaviour is at the same time maintained.

“I am not now to learn,” replied Mr. Collins, with a formal wave of the hand, “that it is usual with young ladies to reject the addresses of the man whom they secretly mean to accept, when he first applies for their favour; and that sometimes the refusal is repeated a second or even a third time. I am therefore by no means discouraged by what you have just said, and shall hope to lead you to the altar ere long.”

“Can I have the carriage?” said Jane. “No, my dear, you had better go on horseback, because it seems likely to rain; and then you must stay all night.”

“To walk three miles, or four miles, or five miles, or whatever it is, above her ankles in dirt, and alone, quite alone! what could she mean by it? It seems to me to show an abominable sort of conceited independence, a most country town indifference to decorum.” “It shows an affection for her sister that is very pleasing,” said Bingley.

“I have an excessive regard for Jane Bennet, she is really a very sweet girl, and I wish with all my heart she were well settled. But with such a father and mother, and such low connections, I am afraid there is no chance of it.”

“You expect me to account for opinions which you choose to call mine, but which I have never acknowledged.

“I am very sensible, madam, of the hardship to my fair cousins⁠—and could say much on the subject, but that I am cautious of appearing forward and precipitate. But I can assure the young ladies that I come prepared to admire them. At present I will not say more, but perhaps when we are better acquainted⁠—”

I am not qualified to form one. I have known him too long and too well to be a fair judge. It is impossible for me to be impartial.

“I know very well, madam,” said he, “that when persons sit down to a card table, they must take their chance of these things⁠—and happily I am not in such circumstances as to make five shillings any object. There are undoubtedly many who could not say the same, but thanks to Lady Catherine de Bourgh, I am removed far beyond the necessity of regarding little matters.”

Pardon me for neglecting to profit by your advice, which on every other subject shall be my constant guide, though in the case before us I consider myself more fitted by education and habitual study to decide on what is right than a young lady like yourself.”

“Believe me, my dear Miss Elizabeth, that your modesty, so far from doing you any disservice, rather adds to your other perfections.

“My reasons for marrying are, first, that I think it a right thing for every clergyman in easy circumstances (like myself) to set the example of matrimony in his parish. Secondly, that I am convinced it will add very greatly to my happiness; and thirdly⁠—which perhaps I ought to have mentioned earlier, that it is the particular advice and recommendation of the very noble lady whom I have the honour of calling patroness.

On that head, therefore, I shall be uniformly silent; and you may assure yourself that no ungenerous reproach shall ever pass my lips when we are married.”