Sense and sensibility - Jane Ostin

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

A man who has nothing to do with his own time has no conscience in his intrusion on that of others.

Seven years would be insufficient to make some people acquainted with each other, and seven days are more than enough for others.

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.

Marianne could never love by halves; and her whole heart became, in time, as much devoted to her husband, as it had once been to Willoughby.

You shall find me as stubborn as you can be artful.

…and all that can be said of one's happiness depending entirely on any particular person, it is not meant—it is not fit—it is not possible that it should be so.

I have frequently detected myself in such kind of mistakes, in a total misapprehension of character in some point or other: fancying people so much more gay or grave, or ingenious or stupid than they really are, and I can hardly tell why or in what the deception originated. 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.

The business of self-command she settled very easily;—with strong affections it was impossible, with calm ones it could have no merit.

It is not time or opportunity that is to determine intimacy;—it is disposition alone.

Oh! how easy for those, who have no sorrow of their own to talk of exertion!

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

I feel no sentiment of approbation inferior to love.

Elinor was to be the comforter of others in her own distresses, no less than in theirs.

Misery such as mine has no pride. I care not who knows that I am wretched. The triumph of seeing me so may be open to all the world.

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.