No young woman of good breeding should show exclusive partiality to one partner all night.

It is our feelings that guide us and they can never lead us wrong

You can greet even the dullest acquaintance with pleasure, if you have forgotten their dreary story.

We always think we know what we want: when in truth there is nothing we are less likely to know.

I make a rule never to remember anything before last week. It makes life more interesting

I have striven never to betray myself

She sincerely wishes success, for her new life, and intends that no failure of effort, temper, or spirits on her part will jeopardise it.

There can be few places more conducive to the quiet, solitary contemplation of melancholy thoughts than a window-seat; and if beyond the window-panes there is a steely vignette of November murk and withered twigs, so...

Really, I protest–what is left for the satirical mind to invent when reality so surpasses it?

It is so important to think for yourself.

Imagination shrinks from the consequences.

Everyone has something of the spiti that animates the artist

So this, Harriet thought, gazing at her black-clad reflection, was what bearing up looked like. The eyes in the mirror stared at her, somehow, while fixing themselves far away.Bearing up, then, must be this: the...

It is painful to see someone suffering what you must be suffering- watching someone you love be so cruelly hurt.

Curious creatures we mortals are-how we do not know what we want, or how to get it if we do.

A girl should set her sights on a man who has money; or if not, who can expect to come into money; or if not, who has moneyed connections.

No expectations mean there is no risk of disappointment.

I will do what I can

You cannot believe everything you hear

If someone tries to use you as a tool, you shouldn’t mind it, because it is their choice and folly, not yours.

Without money and without connections- I have failed you!

I am afraid I shall disappoint people’s expectations dreadfully.

Emily’s world fascinates and disturbs: in it you can touch thick Yorkshire speech, and moorland rain slants across your mind with a smell of mossy limestone and yet you are not at home, you might...

I am no faint-heart when it comes to the unpleasant truth. Indeed I have always taken a bracing sort of pleasure in facing it.

Country picnics always sound nicer than they are. I think we should just have the idea of them, and be pleased with it, and then not go. The only true pleasures are indoors, artificial, and...

Words are only words

You have made him live.

People argue themselves out of their pleasures

The stupidest people suddenly become a little cleverer when we learn that they think well of us

I do not say that I could never be persuaded to sacrifice my reputation to passion- only that it would take a great deal.

I can always forgive where I understand.

The glitter of the great world, you know, is only so much froth and spume: you may look in vain for happiness there.

Anne’s is a world very like this one, and you can move about in it with familiarity – but not freedom: it is a place of rigorous consequence, where the weak have to give way...

It is presumptuous to draw conclusions about a person from what one has heard

A balance, I think, is needed , ” Dr. Templeton said judiciously,”between the head and the heart: nothing easier to say: nothing harder to achieve.

Keats was getting a reputation just when he was too ill to appreciate it or build on it: his country was taking notice of him just when he would have to leave it.

I confess I found it somewhat insipid when I last went….it was all so prosy – so bonnety – so whisty and teacuppy – you see, the adjectives for it do not even exist, and...

Society can only hurt if you care for its opinion

One wouldn’t wish to tempt fate

Dullness it is that perverts and corrups the spirit but it is always possible to look past the dullness, and see the bright, shining heart of things

Everything about everybody was very soon known by everybody else.

I have never understood why a woman must have a man to take her into dinner.

Probably no purer incitement to hatred existed, Lydia had found, than being told of anyone or anything: you will love him, her or it. The spirit immediately rose up like a fanged cobra.

That’s the way girls are isn’t it? They swear eternal friendship, and then as soon as a man’s in the case it’s all forgotten.

One hesitates to open a new chapter when the old one is not resolved.