Jane Austen, Emma
38 quotes
"Time did not compose her."
"It has sunk him, I cannot say how much it has sunk him in my opinion. So unlike what a man should be!-None of that upright integrity, that strict adherence to truth and principle, that distain of trick and littleness, which a man should display in every transaction of his life."
"My Emma, does not every thing serve to prove more and more the beauty of truth and sincerity in all our dealings with each other?"
"Happiness must preclude false indulgence and physic."
"Time will generally lessen the interest of every attachment not within the daily circle."
"She looked back as well as she could; but it was all confusion. She had taken up the idea, she supposed and made everything bend to it."
"But one never does form a just idea of anybody beforehand. One takes up a notion and runs away with it."
"The most incomprehensible thing in the world to a man, is a woman who rejects his offer of marriage!"
"Luck which so often defies anticipation in matrimonial affairs, giving attraction to what is moderate rather than to what is superior."
"With such a worshipping wife, it was hardly possible that any natural defects in it should not be increased. The extreme sweetness of her temper must hurt his."
"I am not only not going to be married, at present, but have very little intention of ever marrying at all."
"There are secrets in all families, you know."
"Blessed with so many resources within myself the world was not necessary to me. I could do very well without it."
"What had she have to wish for? Nothing but to grow more worthy of him whose intentions and judgment had been ever so superior to her own."
"What had she to wish for? Nothing, but to grow more worthy of him whose intentions and judgment had been ever so superior to her own."
"Ever since her being turned into a Churchill, she has out-Churchill'd them all in high and mighty claims."
"the only source whence any thing like consolation or composure could be drawn, was in the resolution of her own better conduct, and the hope that, however inferior in spirit and gaiety might be the following and every future winter of her life to the past, it would yet find her more rational, more acquainted with herself, and leave her less to regret when it were gone."
"Trusting that you will some time or other do me greater justice than you can do now."
"Mr. Knightley to be no longer coming there for his evening comfort! - No longer walking in at all hours, as if ever willing to change his own home for their's! - How was it to be endured?"
"You are very fond of bending little minds; but where little minds belong to rich people in authority, I think they have a knack of swelling out, till they are quite as unmanageable as great ones."
"She will never submit to any thing requiring industry and patience, and a subjection of the fancy to the understanding."
"It was impossible to quarrel with words, whose tremulous inequality showed indisposition so plainly."
"I must tell you what you will not ask, though I may wish it unsaid the next moment"
"She had always wanted to do every thing, and had made more progress in both drawing and music than many might have done with so little labour as she ever would submit to... She was not much deceived as to her own skill either as an artist or a musician, but she was not unwilling to have others deceived, or sorry to know her reputation for accomplishment often higher than it deserved."
"We must consider what Miss. Fairfax quits, before we condemn her taste for what she goes to."