Contest Closed: Using a random number generator, the winner is Leslie Ann McCleod. Her quote was:
“Tell me if, when I returned to England in the year eight, with a few thousand pounds, and was posted into the Laconia, if I had then written to you, would you have answered my letter? would you, in short, have renewed the engagement then?”
“Would I!” was all her answer; but the accent was decisive enough. – Persuasion
Thank you all for participating!
Good news! You have an opportunity to win a copy of Fashion in the Time of Jane Austen! All you need to do is leave a comment with your favorite line from a Jane Austen novel. The line can come from any character and be on any topic. The winner will be announced two weeks from today on April 19th. One lucky person will be chosen using a random number creator. Those who live in Canada and the U.S. are eligible to enter the contest.
Format: Trade Paperback, 64 pages
Author: Sarah Jane Downing
Price: $12.95
ISBN: 978-0-7478-0767-4 (0-7478-0767-1)
“I cannot speak well enough to be unintelligible.”
Catherine Morland to Mr. Tilney / Northanger Abbey :)
“Dare not say that a man forgets sooner than woman, that his love has an earlier death. I have loved none but you. Unjust I may have been, weak and resentful I have been, but never inconstant.”
— Captain Wentworth, Persuasion
We’re on the same wavelength Lydiane!
That’s my favorite part of the whole book. That letter kills me every time! Here’s my line:
“I offer myself to you again with a heart even more your own than when you almost broke it, eight years and a half ago.” Captain Wentworth, Persuasion Chapter 23
In teaching literature to 8th grade gifted students, I often borrowed quotes from the author being studied. The following quote from Jane Austen was posted to encourage students to produce one work of quality rather than amass a quantity of mediocre work. We used the symbol Q/Q = Quality over Quantity.
Pride and Prejudice
The power of doing anything with quickness is always prized much by the possessor, and often without any attention to the imperfection of the performance. Chapter 10
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This post was mentioned on Twitter by janeaustenworld: Book Giveaway: Fashion in the Time of Jane Austen http://bit.ly/bxLZHS…
“I have no pretensions whatever to that kind of elegance which consists in tormenting a respectable man.” Lizzie to Mr. Collins~ Pride and Prejudice
Cheers!
“There is a stubbornness about me that never can bear to be frightened at the will of others. My courage always rises with every attempt to intimidate me.”
Elizabeth to Mr. Darcy in Pride & Prejudice….I love this part :)
So my favorite line would have to be what got me to read my first Austen novel, finally, in my thirties. It was a line from Emma I saw in a trailer for the BBC/PBS special…In the noveln “then don’t speak it, don’t speak it. Take a little time, consider, do not commit yourself.”
“There are few people in England, I suppose, who have more true enjoyment of music than myself, or a better natural taste. If I had ever learnt, I should have been a great proficient.”
Lady Catherine to Darcy, Pride and Prejudice
“The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid.” -Henry Tilney, Northanger Abbey, Chapter 14
I love throwing this out there when ever someone tells me that I read too much or that I should stop reading.
-Jessica Tapia
“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.” – Pride & Prejudice, Chapter 1
(for me, this sums up the book in several points; some of which I’m still learning even after reading P&P more times than I can remember!)
“A man does not recover from such a devotion of the heart to such a woman! He ought not; he does not.”
~Capt. Wentworth
“Where youth and diffidence are united, it requires uncommon steadiness of reason to resist the attraction of being called the most charming girl in the world.”
:) -Blair
“… if she should die, it would be a comfort to know that it was all in pursuit of Mr Bingley, and under your orders.” – Mr. Bennet
It just says so much!
“It is not every one,” said Elinor, “who has your passion for dead leaves.”
S&S
(LOVE this giveaway! Book looks fab!)
My favorite bit ends in the middle of a sentence.
“They came from Birmingham, which is not a place to promise much, you know, Mr. Weston. One has not great hopes from Birmingham. I always say there is something direful in the sound: but nothing more is positively known of the Tupmans, though a good many things I assure you are suspected; and yet by their manners they evidently think themselves equal even to my brother, Mr. Suckling, who happens to be one of their nearest neighbours.”
— Chapter 36 of Emma
” Yes,” replied Darcy, who could contain himself no longer,
“but that was only when I first knew her, for it is many months since I have considered her as one of the handsomest women of my acquaintance.”
-Darcy, speaking to Miss Bingley about Lizzie.
No,” he calmly replied, “there is but one married woman in the world whom I can ever allow to invite what guests she pleases to Donwell, and that one is — ”
“Mrs. Weston, I suppose,” interrupted Mrs. Elton, rather mortified.
“No — Mrs. Knightley; and, till she is in being, I will manage such matters myself.”
Mrs. Elton and Mr. Knightly from Emma Chapter 42
“I cannot fix on the hour, or the look, or the words, which laid the foundation. It is too long ago. I was in the middle before I knew that I had begun.”- Darcy, Pride and Prejudice
…and feeling in herself the right of seniority of mind, she ventured to recommend a larger allowance of prose in his daily study…
Persusion, Ch. 11
I have several quotes that are my favorite. But I think this one below is very true towards myself.
“All the privilege I claim for my own sex… is that of loving longest, when existence or when hope is gone.” –Anne Elliot
Woman is fine for her own satisfaction alone.
– Northanger Abbey –
“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife”
I love this quote from Persuasion, it’s so beautiful and heart wrenching:
“…There could have been no two hearts so open, no tastes so simliar, no feelings so in unison, no countenances so beloved. Now they were as strangers; nay, worse than strangers, for they could never become aquainted. It was a perpetual estrangement.”
I have so many! My current favorite: “For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbours and laugh at them in our turn?” ~Pride & Prejudice
‘You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope. Tell me not that I am too late, that such precious feelings are gone for ever. I offer myself to you again with a heart even more your own than when you almost broke it, eight and a half years ago. Dare not say that a man forgets sooner than woman, that his love has an earlier death. I have loved none but you. Unjust I may have been, weak and resentful I have been, but never inconstant.”
Persuasion
“To be claimed as a good, though in an improper style, is at least better than being rejected as no good at all…”
Persuasion
(Thank you for such an enjoyable site!)
“I do want you to be honest. Have I no chance at succeeding? My dearest Emma- for that is what you always have been and always will be. My most beloved Emma. I can not make speeches. If I loved you less I might be able to talk about it more. But you know what I am. I have lectured you and scolded you and you have born it as no other woman could.”-Mr. Knightly “Can this be true?”-Emma Woodhouse ” You’ll get nothing but the truth from me. So tell me what you think.”-Mr. Knightly “I find.. I find I do not know what to say.”-Emma Woodhouse (Emma).
I love this part. It just makes your heart go thump thump and even though you know it was going to happen, because you have probably read it and seen it a bunch of times prior, it never makes the thump thump go away.
That’s what Jane Austen’s novels do to me every single time I read them and reread them.
…I leave it to be settled by whomsoever it may concern, whether the tendency of this work be altogether to recommend parental tyranny, or reward filial disobedience.
Northanger Abbey
‘My dearest sister, now be serious. I want to talk very seriously. Let me know every thing that I am to know, without delay. Will you tell me how long you have loved him?’
‘It has been coming on so gradually, that I hardly know when it began. But I believe I must date it from my first seeing his beautiful grounds at Pemberley.’
Elizabeth answering Jane’s question, Pride & Prejudice
“I may have lost my heart, but not my self-control. ”
Emma
From Sense and Sensibility: Mrs. Jennings to Colonel Brandon upon learning the Miss Dashwwod’s would be returning home, “…and how forlorn we shall be, when I come back! — Lord! we shall sit and gape at one another as dull as two cats.”
Strikes me as quite funny.
There are so many! The first to leap to mind is Henry Tilney’s: “I use the verb ‘to torment,’ as I observed to be your own method, instead of ‘to instruct,’ supposing them to be now admitted as synonymous.”
“You must know… surely, you must know it was all for you. You are too generous to trifle with me. I believe you spoke with my aunt last night, and it has taught me to hope as I’d scarcely allowed myself before. If your feelings are still what they were last April, tell me so at once. My affections and wishes have not changed, but one word from you will silence me forever. If, however, your feelings have changed, I will have to tell you: you have bewitched me, body and soul, and I love, I love, I love you. I never wish to be parted from you from this day on. ”
– Fitzwilliam Darcy to Elizabeth Bennet
“…the joyful consent which met Edmund’s application, the high sense of having realised a great acquisition in the promise of Fanny for a daughter, formed just such a contrast with his early opinion on the subject when the poor little girl’s coming had been first agitated, as time is for ever producing between the plans and decisions of mortals, for their own instruction, and their neighbours’ entertainment.” — Mansfield Park, Chapter 48.
“You mistake me, my dear. I have a high respect for your nerves. They are my old friends. I have heard you mention them with consideration these twenty years at least.”
Mr. Bennet, P&P
“The more I see of the world, the more I am dissatisfied with it.” ~Elizabeth Bennet
Elizabeth Bennett to Lady Catharine after she has maligned Mrs Bennet for raising her daughters poorly and demanded that she promise never to become engaged to Mr. Darcy:
“You have insulted me in every possible way, and can now have nothing further to say.”
“I thank you again and again, for not going to the Lakes. How could I be so silly as to wish it?”
–Elizabeth to her Aunt Gardiner
Can I have two?
“All the privilege I claim for my own sex… is that of loving longest, when existence or when hope is gone.” by Anne Elliot in Persuasion.
and
“We have all a better guide in ourselves, if we would attend to it, than any other person can be” by Fanny Price in Mansfield Park
“Vanity and pride are different things, though the words are often used synonymously. A person may be proud without being vain. Pride relates more to our opinion of ourselves; vanity, to what we would have others think of us.” From Pride and Prejudice.
“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.”
“A lady’s imagination is very rapid; it jumps from admiration to love, from love to matrimony, in a moment.”
“It is very often nothing but our own vanity that deceives us.”
I hope I win!!!!
“You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope.” Tell me not that I am too late, that such precious feelings are gone forever.” Captain Wentworth’s letter to Anne. (Persuasion).
“But when a young lady is to be a heroine, the perverseness of forty surrounding families cannot prevent her. Something must and will happen to throw a hero in her way.”
From Northanger Abbey
“One does not love a place the less for having suffered in it, unless it has been all suffering, nothing but suffering” Persuasion :)
“I am most seriously displeased.”
Pride and Prejudice
“But when a young lady is to be a heroine, the perverseness of forty surrounding families cannot prevent her. Something must and will happen to throw a hero in her way.” (Northanger Abbey)
My absolute favorite quote of all Austen’s works.
“you are the last man I would ever be prevailed to marry!”. P & P elisabeth to Darcy
From NA:
“I will not adopt that ungenerous and impolitic custom so common with novel-writers, of degrading by their contemptuous censure the very performances, to the number of which they are themselves adding — joining with their greatest enemies in bestowing the harshest epithets on such works, and scarcely ever permitting them to be read by their own heroine, who, if she accidentally take up a novel, is sure to turn over its insipid pages with disgust. Alas! If the heroine of one novel be not patronized by the heroine of another, from whom can she expect protection and regard?”
“A large income is the best recipe for happiness I ever heard of. ”
Mansfield Park
“When Mr. Collins could be forgotten, there was really a great air of comfort throughout, and by Charlotte’s evident enjoyment of it, Elizabeth supposed he must be often forgotten.” –Pride and Prejudice
“I cannot make speeches, Emma . . . If I loved you less, I might be able to talk about it more.” Mr Knightley
Thanks so much for the opportunity to win this amazing book. :)
“His disposition must be dreadful.” Elizabeth to Wickham, Pride and Prejudice
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”
-Pride and Prejudice
For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbors, and laugh at them in our turn?
“Vanity and pride are different things, though the words are often used synonymously. A person may be proud without being vain. Pride relates more to our opinion of ourselves, vanity to what we would have others think of us.”
~Mary, Pride & Prejudice
“If there is anything disagreeable going on, men are always sure to get out of it.”
Mary Musgrove to Anne Elliot – Persuasion
“I cannot fix on the hour, or the look, or the words, which laid the foundation. It is too long ago. I was in the middle before I knew that I had begun.”
P&P
Mr.Darcy, Chapter 60
“One half of the world cannot understand the pleasures of the other.”
-Emma
(Miss Bates) –“‘Three things very dull indeed.’ That will just do for me, you know. I shall be sure to say three dull things as soon as ever I open my mouth, shan’t I? . . . Do not you all think I shall?” Volume 3 Chapter 7 Emma–
This conversation between Mr. and Mrs. Bennet always makes me smile–I do so adore Mr. Bennet:
“Mr. Bennet, how can you abuse your own children in such a way? You take delight in vexing me. You have no compassion of my poor nerves.”
“You mistake me, my dear. I have a high respect for your nerves. They are my old friends. I have heard you mention them with consideration these twenty years at least.”
For me too: :)
“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.”
– Pride & Prejudice, Chapter 1
“The person, be it gentlemen or lady, who does not have pleasure in a novel, must be entirely stupid”.
“I was in the middle before I knew that I had begun.” (Mr.Darcy, Chapter 60)
“Is that of loving longest when existence or when hope is gone!” Anne Elliot – Persuasion
I add – that I was reading these entries on my iphone on the bus – and thought of what a wealth of literature we have here…I go from laughing to tears to a wry smile…each quote hits its mark ! Nice !
Silly things do cease to be silly if they are done by sensible people in an impudent way. Emma :)
Great Giveaway!
From Persuasion:
“I can listen no longer in silence. I must speak to you by such means as are within my reach. You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope. Tell me not that I am too late, that such precious feelings are gone for ever. I offer myself to you again with a heart even more your own than when you almost broke it, eight years and a half ago. Dare not say that man forgets sooner than woman, that his love has an earlier death. I have loved none but you. Unjust I may have been, weak and resentful I have been, but never inconstant. You alone have brought me to Bath. For you alone I think and plan. Have you not seen this? Can you fail to have understood my wishes? I had not waited even these ten days, could I have read your feelings, as I think you must have penetrated mine. I can hardly write. I am every instant hearing something which overpowers me. You sink your voice, but I can distinguish the tones of that voice when they would be lost on others. Too good, too excellent creature! You do us justice, indeed. You do believe that there is true attachment and constancy among men. Believe it to be most fervent, most undeviating, in
F. W.”
YES ~ Lurve this giveaway! Here is mine and it’s from Persuasion…
‘You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope. Tell me not that I am too late, that such precious feelings are gone for ever. I offer myself to you again with a heart even more your own than when you almost broke it, eight years and a half ago.’
“My fingers,” said Elizabeth, “do not move over this instrument in the masterly manner which I see so many women’s do. They have not the same force or rapidity and do not produce the same expression. But then I have always supposed it to be my own fault – because I would not take the trouble of practising.” P&P
“Tell me if, when I returned to England in the year eight, with a few thousand pounds, and was posted into the Laconia, if I had then written to you, would you have answered my letter? would you, in short, have renewed the engagement then?”
“Would I!” was all her answer; but the accent was decisive enough.
Persuasion
The most appropriate for this give-away, from Northanger Abbey:
“Do you understand muslins, sir?”
So deliciously catty:
“A lady, without a family, was the very best preserver of furniture in the world.” Persuasion.
For this wonderful Giveaway I would like to participate with the following quote, as I long to become a citizen of the world of Jane Austen:
“To the Dutchess of F.
Receive into your Family, at my request, a young woman of unexceptionable Character, who is so good as to choose your Society in preference to going to Service. Hasten, & take her from the arms of your […]”
(Mrs. Sarah Wilson’s letter to the Duchess of F. in: Henry and Eliza)
C. R.
“The nothing of conversation has its own gradations, I hope, as well as the never.”
-Edmund Bertram, Mansfield Park, Chapter 9 : on being a clergyman debate with Miss Crawford
“My idea of good company, Mr. Elliot, is the company of clever, well-informed people, who have a great deal of conversation, that is what I call good company.”–Persuasion
“If I had ever learnt, I should have been a great proficient.”
Probably my favorite Jane Austen line. The stupidity AND the pomposity make me laugh out loud every time! Thank you, Vic, for reminding me of it, and thank you ALL for your contributions; you’ve brightened my day!
“It was rather too late in the day to set about being simple-minded and ignorant….” Emma Chapter 17
“If any young men come for Mary or Kitty, send them in, for I am quite at leisure.”
Mr. Bennet to Elizabeth Bennet on her engagement to Mr. Darcy in Pride and Prejudice.
“…nobody minds having what is too good for them…”
-Mansfield Park
– Nothing ever fatigues me, but doing what I do not like. (Mansfield Park)
“I Knew She Could Not Be So Beautiful For Nothing” Mrs. Bennett
“You thought me then devoid of every proper feeling, I am sure you did. The turn of your countenance I shall never forget, as you said that I could not have addressed you in any possible way that would induce you to accept me.”
Pride and Prejudice
“I could easily forgive his pride, if he had not mortified mine.”
Oh oh so many readers entered the giveaway already! The book looks really great. Hope I have a chance. It’s open for worldwide readers, isn’t it? Here is an interesting line about love from P&P:
To be fond of dancing was a certain step towards falling in love
Steamy Darcy
Here is the quote I chose:
”I have never been in love; it is not my way, or my nature; and I do not think I ever shall.”
– Emma
Thank you for this wonderful giveaway!
“…no one can be really esteemed accomplished, who does not greatly surpass what is usually met with. A woman must have a thorough knowledge of music, singing, drawing, dancing, and… languages… besides… possess a certain something in her air and manner of walking, the tone of her voice, her address and expressions, or the word will be but half deserved.”
…added Darcy, “and to all this she must yet add something more substantial, in the improvement of her mind by extensive reading.”
“I am no longer surprised at your knowing only six accomplished women. I rather wonder now at your knowing any.”
~Pride and Prejudice
“She did not always feel so absolutely satisfied with herself, so entirely convinced that her opinions were right and her adversary’s wrong, as Mr. Knightley.”
– Emma
I’m afraid mine is the same as Jessica.
“The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid.” -Henry Tilney, Northanger Abbey
I love this because of my adoration for reading and I just cannot understand people that do not read. I have even used it as my avatar on occasion.
“An unhappy alternative is before you, Elizabeth. From this day you must be a stranger to one of your parents. Your mother will never see you again if you do not marry Mr. Collins, and I will never see you again if you do.”
~ the quick-witted Mr. Bennett of Pride and Prejudice, of course :)
“Happiness in marriage is entirely a matter of chance.”
Charlotte was wise beyond her years.
The relationship between Mr. and Mrs. Palmer in Sense and Sensibility always amuses me to no end:
“Charlotte laughed heartily to think that her husband could not get rid of her; and exultingly said, she did not care how cross he was to her, as they must live together. It was impossible for any one to be more thoroughly good-natured, or more determined to be happy, than Mrs. Palmer. The studied indifference, insolence, and discontent of her husband gave her no pain; and when he scolded or abused her, she was highly diverted.
‘Mr. Palmer is so droll!’ said she, in a whisper, to Elinor. ‘He is always out of humour.'”
I have always loved this line by Mr. Knightly to Emma. It’s simply, but really speaks a thousand words. ^^
“I cannot make speeches, Emma . . . If I loved you less, I might be able to talk about it more.”
I love this quote of Elizabeth’s in Pride and Prejudice
‘A lady’s imagination is very rapid; it jumps from admiration to love, from love to matrimony, in a moment.’
Mansfield Park:
“Everybody likes to go their own way–to choose their own time and manner of devotion.”
I think it’s Miss Crawford who says it. Or Fanny. The line’s not labeled.
“There is one thing… which a man can always do, if he chooses, and that is, his duty; not by manoeuvering and finessing, but by vigour and resolution.
Mr. Knightley
Emma
(Great gravatar Minna!)
“Nobody, who has not been in the interior of a family, can say what the difficulties of any individual of that family may be.”
Emma Woodhouse
Emma
There are so many great quotes already posted :)
Even after reading Pride and Prejudice for the millionth time, I can’t help but laugh everytime I read:
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife. However little known the feelings or views of such a man may be on his first entering a neighbourhood, this truth is so well fixed in the minds of the surrounding families, that he is considered the rightful property of some one or other of their daughters.
A perfect summary of Mrs. Bennet
I completely agree with this, my favorite, quote from Persuasion:
“It sometimes happens that a woman is handsomer at twenty-nine than she was ten years before; and, generally speaking, if there has been neither ill-health nor anxiety, it is a time of life at which scarcely any charm is lost.”
I hope this is true!!!
“When a young lady is to be aheroine, the perverseness of forty surrounding families cannot prevent her.”
Northanger Abbey
(My personal favorite Jane novel!)
“A lady’s imagination is very rapid; it jumps from admiration to love, from love to matrimony, in a moment.”
:D
I’m rereading Northanger Abbey right now and this made me laugh out loud!
“Ah, Mother! How do you do?” said he [John Thorpe], giving her a hearty shake of the hand. “Where did you get that quiz of a hat? It makes you look like an old witch. Here is Morland and I come to stay a few days with you, so you must look out for a couple of good beds somewhere near.” And this address seemed to satisfy all the fondest wishes of the mother’s heart, for she received him with the most delighted and exulting affection. On his two younger sisters he then bestowed an equal portion of his fraternal tenderness, for he asked each of them how they did, and observed that they both looked very ugly.
Col. Brandon is 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.
Sense & Sensibility
Henry Tilney in Northanger Abbey:
“And are you prepared to encounter all the horrors that a building such as ‘what one reads about’ may produce? — Have you a stout heart? — Nerves fit for sliding panels and tapestry?”
As you said Vic: Nice comments!
I know this quote is so cruelly true… about “poor Dick Musgrove”:
“The real circumstances of this pathetic piece of family history were, that the Musgroves had had the ill fortune of a very troublesome, hopeless son; and the good fortune to lose him before he reached his twentieth year;[…]”
PRIDE AND PREJUDICE
By Jane Austen
Chapter 1 starts with…
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.
My favourite quote!
Persuasion
Chapter XI
“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.”
Miss Anne Elliot
Northanger Abbey:
When a young lady is to be a heroine, the perverseness of forty surrounding families cannot prevent her. Something must and will happen to throw a hero in her way.
From the novel I am currently reading and enjoying most abundantly, come these wise words…
“If a woman doubts as to whether she should accept a man or not, she certainly ought to refuse him. If she can hesitate as to ‘Yes,’ she ought to say ‘No’ directly. It is not a state to be safely entered into with doubtful feelings, with half a heart.”
~Emma Woodhouse in Emma
So many of my favorite quotes have already been mentioned–but here is one I’ve been remembering more and more lately:
“Now I must give one smirk, and then we may be rational again.”
from the incomparable Henry Tilney.
Thanks for doing this!
“I wish someone would die and leave me 10,000 pounds!”
Lydia in Pride and Prejudice
“From all that I can collect by your manner of talking, you must be two of the silliest girls in the country. I have suspected it some time, but I am now convinced.”
Mr Bennet in Pride & Prejudice (Chapter 6)
“I wish as well as every body else to be perfectly happy; but, like every body else it must be in my own way.”
Edward Ferrars in “Sense and Sensibility”
I use this as my email signature:
“It would not be fair to enquire into a young lady’s exact estimate of her own perfections.”
— Jane Austen, _Mansfield Park_, 1814.
(The narrator speculates here on how long Fanny might imagine that Henry Crawford will persevere in pursuing her hand in marriage.)
“Mr Bertram,” said she. I looked back. “Mr Bertram,” said she with a smile.
Jane Austen, Mansfield Park
“Perhaps it it our imperfections that make us so perfect for one another!”
Emma
Only one of my MANY favorites!!!
So many of my favorite quotes have already been posted!
“If the heroine of one novel be not patronised by the heroine of another, from whom can she expect protection and regard?”
Northanger Abbey
Thanks for doing this!
“She is tolerable; but not handsome enough to tempt me; I am in no humour at present to give consequence to young ladies who are slighted by other men. You had better return to your partner and enjoy her smiles, for you are wasting your time with me.”
Mr. Darcy in Pride & Prejudice
“Look here, I have bought this bonnet. I do not think
it is very pretty; but I thought I might as well buy it as not. I shall pull it to pieces as soon as I get home, and see if I can make it up any better.” And when her sisters abused it as ugly, she added, with perfect
unconcern, “Oh! but there were two or three much uglier in the shop; and when I have bought some prettier-coloured satin to trim it with fresh, I
think it will be very tolerable.”
Lydia Bennet, Pride and Prejudice
Said by Henry Crawford in Mansfield Park, just after Sir Thomas breaks up the plans for the play:
“I shall always look back on our theatricals with exquisite pleasure. There was such an interest, such an animation, such a spirit diffused. Everybody felt it. We were all alive. There was employment, hope, solicitude, bustle for every hour of the day. Always some little objection, some little doubt, some little anxiety to be got over. I never was happier.”
“We read, we work, we walk, and when fatigued with these Employments releive our spirits, either by a lively song, a graceful Dance, or by some smart bon-mot, and witty repartee. We are handsome my dear Charlotte, very handsome and the greatest of our Perfections is, that we are entirely insensible of them ourselves.”
Margaret Lesley
Lesley Castle
Thenks for doing this!
I’d love to enter this awesome contest! Thanks!
“I cannot fix on the hour, or the look, or the words, which laid the foundation. It is too long ago. I was in the middle before I knew that I had begun,” Darcy, Pride and Prejudice
I do not pretend to possess equal frankness with your ladyship. You may ask questions which I shall not choose to answer. -Elizabeth in P&P
People do not die of trifling colds! ~Mrs. Bennet in Pride and Prejudice
Excellent choice of quote Vic, and great giveaway! My favorite has already been mentioned. From Persuasion, Anne Elliot said:
“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.”
I always think of Amanda Root when I read Persuasion.
Spoken by Emma Woodhouse:
“It is always incomprehensible to a man, that a women should ever refuse and offer of marriage. A man always imagines a women to be ready for anybodywho asks her.”
~Emma
Wow these quotes are great! I especially loved Rhonda’s :) but my all time favorite quote from Pride and Prejudice (the book I know best) even though it’s not really clever at all…
“I will only add, God bless you. Fitzwilliam Darcy”
sigh…
“Sophia shreiked & fainted on the Ground—I screamed and instantly ran mad—. We remained thus mutually deprived of our Senses some minutes & on regaining them were deprived of them again—. For an Hour & a Quarter did we continue in this unfortunate Situation—Sophia fainting every moment & I running Mad as often.” —Love and Freindship
also
The entire second chapter of Sense and Sensibility, wherein Mrs. John Dashwood helps her husband determine exactly what his father meant when he recommended the interest of his wife and daughters to his heir.
Too many quotes, too little space!
“An unhappy alternative is before you, Elizabeth. From this day you must be a stranger to one of your parents. Your mother will never see you again if you do not marry Mr. Collins, and I will never see you again if you do.”
Lady Catherine De Bourgh in Pride and Prejudice
“No governess! How was that possible? Five daughters brought up at home without a governess! I never heard of such a thing. Your mother must have been quite a slave to your education.”
I homeschool my one son and have this quote posted on my facebook page. It’s tounge in cheek and my homeschool mom girlfriends get a good laugh from Lady Catherine De Bourgh’s chastisement.
Lizzy’s response to Lady Catherine has been already mentioned.
From Sense and Sensibility here’s a great exchange:
After a short pause, “You have no confidence in me, Marianne.”
“Nay, Elinor, this reproach from you!” you who have confidence in no one!”
“Me!” returned Elinor in some confusion; “indeed Marianne, I have nothing to tell.”
“Nor I,” answered Marianne with energy; “our situations then are alike. We have neither of us anything to tell; you, because you communicate, and I, because I conceal nothing.”
Sorry to say, Kirk left out two very important words in the final sentence:
“Nor I,” answered Marianne with energy; “our situations then are alike. We have neither of us any thing to tell; you, because you DO NOT communicate, and I, because I conceal nothing.”
Thank Deb M…however the version of the book that I pulled the quote from did not have “Do Not”…I’ll have to check other copies. However, it does make more sense(hehehe) with the “Do Not” in it.
Kirk
Our group’s annual tea theme is on Lower Assembly Balls and Bath Society focusing on Northanger Abbey.
Here is what I put on the back our program.
… no young lady can be justified in falling in love before a gentleman’s love is declared, it must be very improper that a young lady should dream of a gentleman before the gentleman is first known to have dreamt of her. Northanger Abbey.
“It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.”
“She is tolerable; but not handsome enough to tempt me; I am in no humour at present to give consequence to young ladies who are slighted by other men. You had better return to your partner and enjoy her smiles, for you are wasting your time with me.” (Mr Darcy to Mr. Bingley about Elizabeth Bennet ~ Pride and Prejudice
So many of my favourites have been claimed.
Here is one I have been so fortunate as to use many times:
“The rent may be low but I believe we have it on very hard terms.”
~ Marianne in S&S
“To begin perfect happiness at the respective ages of twenty-six and eighteen is to do pretty well; and professing myself moreover convinced that the general’s unjust interference, so far from being really injurious to their felicity, was perhaps rather conducive to it, by improving their knowledge of each other, and adding strength to their attachment, I leave it to be settled, by whomsoever it may concern, whether the tendency of this work be altogether to recommend parental tyranny, or reward filial disobedience.”
Northanger Abbey
From Emma: “Human nature is so well disposed towards those who are in interesting situations, that a young person, who either marries or dies, is sure of being kindly spoken of.”
All of these quotations are so wonderful! I am itching to crack open all of my books for a re-read.
Catherine Moreland’s thoughts while on a carriage ride with with Mr. Thorpe:
“Little as Catherine was in the habit of judging for herself, and unfixed as were her general notions of what men ought to be, she could not entirely repress a doubt, while she bore with the effusions of his endless conceit, of his being altogether completely agreeable.”
It shows a young lady beginning to know her own mind.
From Persuasion..have to smile everytime I read this!
“A lady, without a family, was the very best preserver of furniture in the world”
“…and therefore you must visit him as soon as he comes.
I see no occasion for that. You and the girls may go, or you may send them by themselves, which perhaps will be still better, for as you are as handsome as any of them, Mr. Bingley may like you the best of the party.”
Mr. and Mrs Bennet (Pride and Prejudice)
“Oh! I always deserve the best treatment, because I never put up with any other;
Emma
What a heartening list to see from an eighteenth-century British literature professor’s point of view! Many of my favorites are already here. I’ll only add this one, which is actually from one of JA’s letters to her sister and not from one of the novels (so probably doesn’t count, but it goes so well with the topic of the giveaway book I could not resist sharing it):
“I have changed my mind, and changed the trimmings of my cap this morning; they are now such as you suggested.”
– Jane Austen to her sister, Cassandra, 1798
“There are few people whom I really love, and still fewer of whom I think well. The more I see of the world; the more I am dissatisfied with it; and every day confirms my belief of the inconsistency of all human characters, and of the little dependence that can be placed on the appearance of merit or sense.”
Elizabeth Bennet to her sister Jane
Pride and Prejudice
“‘Keep your breath to cool your porridge’; and I shall keep mine to swell my song.” Lizzie to Darcy and Charlotte regarding her poor skills at the piano and singing
This is my favorite
“She had been forced into prudence in her youth, she learned romance as she grew older: the natural sequence of an unnatural beginning.”
Persuasion is great once you really know about love and lost
I do not want people to be agreeable, as it saves me the trouble of liking them.
“You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope. Tell me not that I am too late, that such precious feelings are gone for ever. I offer myself to you again with a heart even more your own than when you almost broke it, eight years and a half ago. Dare not say that man forgets sooner than woman, that his love has an earlier death. I have loved none but you. Unjust I may have been, weak and resentful I have been, but never inconstant. You alone have brought me to Bath. For you alone, I think and plan. Have you not seen this? Can you fail to have understood my wishes? I had not waited even these ten days, could I have read your feelings, as I think you must have penetrated mine. I can hardly write. I am every instant hearing something which overpowers me. You sink your voice, but I can distinguish the tones of that voice when they would be lost on others. Too good, too excellent creature! You do us justice, indeed. You do
believe that there is true attachment and constancy among men. Believe it to be most fervent, most undeviating, in F. W.”
Loved reading all these quotes! They’re all favourites, but I must say I’ve always had a fascination with Charlotte Lucas – I think Jane Austen was venturing into pretty complex psychology with this character!
“Miss Lucas perceived him from an upper window as he walked towards the house, and instantly set out to meet him accidentally in the lane. But little had she dared to hope that so much love and eloquence awaited her there….The stupidity with which he was favoured by nature must guard his courtship from any charm that could make a woman wish for its continuance; and Miss Lucas, who accepted him solely from the pure and disinterested desire of an establishment, cared not how soon that establishment were gained.”
“I will not allow it to be more man’s nature than woman’s to be inconstant and forget those they do love, or have loved. I believe in a true analogy between our bodily frames and our mental; and that as our bodies are the strongest, so are our feelings; capable of bearing most rough usage, and riding out the heaviest weather.” – Captain Wentworth, Persuasion
“Friday, went to the Lower Rooms; wore my sprigged muslin robe with blue trimmings — plain black shoes — appeared to much advantage; but was strangely harassed by a queer, half–witted man, who would make me dance with him, and distressed me by his nonsense.”
Henry Tilney, writing Catherine’s journal for her.
“We neither of us perform to strangers.” — Darcy to Elizabeth
Pride and Prejudice
“I lay it down as a general rule, Harriet, that if a woman doubts as to whether she should accept a man or not, she certainly ought to refuse him. If she can hesitate as to “Yes,” she ought to say “No” directly.” — Emma Woodhouse to Harriet Smith
Emma
“Next to being married, a girl likes to be crossed in love a little now and then. “
“I believe I can date my love for him to the day I first laid my eyes on Pemberly”
“Friendship is certainly the finest balm for the pangs of disappointed love.” Northanger Abbey, ch. 4
“….let other pens dwell on guilt and misery….””””
“….let other pens dwell on guilt and misery…”
**Mansfield Park**
You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope. Tell me not that I am too late, that such precious feelings are gone for ever. I offer myself to you again with a heart even more your own than when you almost broke it, eight and a half years ago. Dare not say that a man forgets sooner than woman, that his love has an earlier death. I have loved none but you. Unjust I may have been, weak and resentful I have been, but never inconstant. (Persuasion)
My favorite quote is from Persuasion.
The narrator tells us, “She was persuaded to believe the engagement a wrong thing – indiscreet, improper, hardly capable of success, and not deserving it.”
I love the discreet introduction of the very element that has resulted in Anne’s years of unhappiness and I appreciate that it reveals to us, the readers, that Jane was incorrectly “persuaded.”
Contest Closed: Using a random number generator, the winner is Leslie Ann McLeod.
THANK YOU ALL for participating. I love these quotes and will use them throughout the next year. Vic
[…] outstanding and I loved every one of the quotes. For those who would like to read all 164 of them, click on this link. Every week, I will post another 5 – 10 until everyone has been […]
I love what you do and I linked you on my blog. I was wondering of you could link me on yours. Thanks.
[…] May 5, 2010 by Vic My book contest for Fashion in the Time of Jane Austen closed last month. The comments were outstanding and I loved every one of the quotes that were submitted. Every week, I will post another 5 – 10 until every quote has been featured. For those who cannot wait to read all 164 of them, click on this link. […]
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