Jane Austen

No young lady can be justified in falling in love before the gentleman's love is declared, it must be very improper that a young lady should dream of a gentleman before the gentleman is first known to have dreamt of her.

"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."

"Perhaps I shall. Yes, yes, if you please, no reference to examples in books. Men have had every advantage of us in telling their own story. Education has been theirs in so much higher a degree; the pen has been in their hands. I will not allow books to prove anything."

"It is amazing to me," said Bingley, "How young ladies can have patience to be so very accomplished as they all are."
"All young ladies accomplished? My dear Charles, what do you mean?"
"Yes, all of them, I think. They all paint tables, cover screens and net purses. I scarcely know any one who cannot do all this, and I am sure I never heard a young lady spoken of for the first time without being informed that she was very accomplished."
"Your list of the common extent of accomplishments," said Darcy, "has too much truth. The word is applied to many a woman who deserves it no otherwise than by netting a purse or covering a screen. But I am very far from agreeing with you in your estimation of ladies in general. I cannot boast of knowing more than half a dozen, in the whole range of my acquaintance, that are really accomplished."
"Nor I, I am sure." said Miss Bingley.
"Then," observed Elizabeth, "you must comprehend a great deal in your idea of an accomplished woman."
"Yes, I do comprehend a great deal in it."
"Oh! certainly," cried his faithful assistant, "no one can really be esteemed accomplished who does not greatly surpass knowledge of music, singing, drawing, dancing, and the modern languages, to deserve the word; and besides all this, she must possess a certain something in her air and manner of walking, the tone of her voice, her address and expressions, or the word will be but half deserved."
"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."
"I am no longer surprised at your knowing only six accomplished women. I rather wonder at your knowing any."

Know your own happiness.

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

We do not suffer by accident.

And pictures of perfection, as you know, make me sick and wicked.

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.

Could there be finer symptoms? Is not general incivility the very essence of love?

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

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

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

Mr. Darcy began to feel the danger of paying Elizabeth too much attention.

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 not every man's fate to marry the woman who loves him best