"Vanity was the beginning and the end of Sir Walter Elliot's character; vanity of person and of situation. He had been remarkably handsome in his youth; and, at fifty-four, was still a very fine man. Few women could think more of their personal appearance than he did, nor could the valet of any new made lord be more delighted with the place he held in society. He considered the blessing of beauty as inferior only to the blessing of a baronetcy; and the Sir Walter Elliott, who united these gifts, was the constant object of his warmest respect and devotion."

"How quick come the reasons for approving what we like!"

"My sore throats, you know, are always worse than anybody's."

"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!"

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

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

"[...] an earnest, an unceasing attention to self-interest, however its progress may be apparently obstructed, will do in securing every advantage of fortune, with no other sacrifice than that of time and conscience."

"No indeed, I am never too busy to think of S & S. I can no more forget it, than a mother can forget her sucking child."

"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."

"I did not then know what it was to love [...] had I really loved, could I have sacrificed my feelings to vanity, to avarice?"

"[...] a punctuality not very agreeable to their sister-in-law, who [...] was then hoping for some delay on their part that might inconvenience either herself or her coachman."

"There was a kind of cold hearted selfishness on both sides, which mutually attracted them; and they sympathised with each other in an insipid propriety of demeanour, and a general want of understanding."

"Nothing gave any symptom of that indigence [...] – no poverty of any kind, except of conversation, appeared – but there, the deficiency was considerable."

"In spite of the absolute necessity of their returning to fulfil them immediately, which was in full force at the end of every week, they were prevailed on to stay nearly two months [...]."

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

"Shyness is only the effect of a sense of inferiority in some way or other. If I could persuade myself that my manners were perfectly easy and graceful, I should not be shy."

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

"Know your own happiness. You want nothing but patience; or give it a more fascinating name: call it hope."

"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."

"[...] people always live for ever when there is any annuity to be paid them."

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

"No sooner was his father's funeral over, than Mrs John Dashwood [...] arrived with her child and their attendants."

"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."

"[...] mindful of the feelings of others; and much was said on the subject of rain by both of them [to change topic]."

"To hear those beautiful lines which have frequently almost driven me wild, pronounced with such impenetrable calmness, such dreadful indifference!"

"Marianne would have thought herself very inexcusable had she been able to sleep at all the first night after parting from Willoughby."

"I never wish to offend, but I am so foolishly shy, that I often seem negligent, when I am only kept back by my natural awkwardness."

"He was not an ill-disposed young man, unless to be rather cold hearted, and rather selfish, is to be ill-disposed."

"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."

"Sir John was delighted; for to a man, whose prevailing anxiety was the dread of being alone, the acquisition of two, to the number of inhabitants in London, was something."

"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..."

"As it was impossible however now to prevent their coming, Lady Middleton resigned herself to the idea of it, with all the philosophy of a well bred woman, contenting herself with merely giving her husband a gentle reprimand on the subject five or six times every day."

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

"Depend upon it, you see but half. You see the evil, but you do not see the consolation. 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— and those evil-minded observers, dearest Mary, who make much of a little, are more taken in and deceived than the parties themselves."

"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."

"There is nothing like employment, active indispensable employment, for relieving sorrow. Employment, even melancholy, may dispel melancholy, and her occupations were hopeful."

"The gentleness, modesty, and sweetness of her character were warmly expatiated on; that sweetness which makes so essential a part of every woman's worth in the judgment of man, that though he sometimes loves where it is not, he can never believe it absent."

"We have all a better guide in ourselves, if we would attend to it, than any other person can be."

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

"One cannot fix one's eyes on the commonest natural production without finding food for a rambling fancy."

"The enthusiasm of a woman's love is even beyond the biographer's."

"Where any one body of educated men, of whatever denomination, are condemned indiscriminately, there must be a deficiency of information, or...of something else."

"It will, I believe, be everywhere found, that as the clergy are, or are not what they ought to be, so are the rest of the nation."

"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."

"Nothing amuses me more than the easy manner with which everybody settles the abundance of those who have a great deal less than themselves."

"I pay very little regard," said Mrs. Grant, "to what any young person says on the subject of marriage. If they profess a disinclination for it, I only set it down that they have not yet seen the right person."

"How wonderful, how very wonderful the operations of time, and the changes of the human mind!"

"Oh! do not attack me with your watch. A watch is always too fast or too slow. I cannot be dictated to by a watch."