Sense and Sensibility

Sense and Sensibility (1811)

by Jane Austen

• People always live for ever when there is an annuity to be paid them . . .

• He was not handsome, and his manners required intimacy to make them pleasing. He was too diffident to do justice to himself; but when his natural shyness was overcome, his behaviour gave every indication of an open, affectionate heart.

• Her mind did become settled, but it was settled in a gloomy dejection. She felt the loss of Willoughby's character yet more heavily than she had felt the loss of his heart...

• Fortunately for those who pay their court through such foibles, a fond mother, though, in pursuit of praise for her children, the most rapacious of human beings, is likewise the most credulous; her demands are exorbitant; but she will swallow any thing...

• Elinor was to be the comforter of others in her own distresses, no less than in theirs; and all the comfort that could be given by assurances of her own composure of mind, and a very earnest vindication of Edward from every charge but of imprudence, was readily offered.

• The pleasantness of an employment does not always evince its propriety.

• Yet 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.

• They gave themselves up wholly to their sorrow, seeking increase of wretchedness in every reflection that could afford it, and resolved against ever admitting consolation in future.

• 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.

• His own enjoyment, or his own ease, was, in every particular, his ruling principle.

• I suppose you know, ma'am, that Mr. Ferrars is married.