It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.
You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you. -Mr. Darcy
In vain have I struggled. It will not do. My feelings will not be repressed. You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you.
Nothing is more deceitful than the appearance of humility. It is often only carelessness of opinion, and sometimes an indirect boast.
She is tolerable, but not handsome enough to tempt me, and I am in no humor at present to give consequence to young ladies who are slighted by other men.
Till this moment I never knew myself.
You are mistaken, Mr. Darcy, if you suppose that the mode of your declaration affected me in any other way, than as it spared the concern which I might have felt in refusing you, had you behaved in a more gentlemanlike manner.
The more I see of the world, the more am I dissatisfied with it.
I declare after all there is no enjoyment like reading!
What are men to rocks and mountains?
There are few people whom I really love and still fewer of whom I think well.
Loss of virtue in a female is irretrievable; that one false step involves her in endless ruin; that her reputation is no less brittle than it is beautiful; and that she cannot be too much guarded in her behaviour towards the undeserving of the other sex.
There is a stubbornness about me that never can bear to be frightened at the will of others. My courage always rises at every attempt to intimidate me.
I haven't any right to criticize books, and I don't do it except when I hate them. I often want to criticize Jane Austen, but her books madden me so that I can't conceal my frenzy from the reader; and therefore I have to stop every time I begin. Every time I read Pride and Prejudice I want to dig her up and beat her over the skull with her own shin-bone.
From the very beginning— from the first moment, I may almost say— of my acquaintance with you, your manners, impressing me with the fullest belief of your arrogance, your conceit, and your selfish disdain of the feelings of others, were such as to form the groundwork of disapprobation on which succeeding events have built so immovable a dislike; and I had not known you a month before I felt that you were the last man in the world whom I could ever be prevailed on to marry.
Stupid men are the only ones worth knowing after all.
Had I been in love, I could not have been more wretchedly blind. But vanity, not love, has been my folly.
If I had ever learnt, I should have been a great proficient.
Vanity, not love, has been my folly.
Next to being married, a girl likes to be crossed in love a little now and then.
or simply:
