Losing maturity in one’s fiction for the sake of marvels and monsters can also mean losing propriety, and that’s not always a bad thing.

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...

…the pleasantness of an employment does not always evince its propriety.

Success is not worth rejoicing over, failure is not worth grieving over.

Patience and propriety. It was the only graceful thing to do.

But my way of writing is rather to think aloud, and follow my own humours, than much to consider who is listening to me; and, if I stop to consider what is proper to be...

She sang, as requested. There was much about love in the ballad: faithful love that refused to abandon its object; love that disaster could not shake; love that, in calamity, waxed fonder, in poverty clung...

There are certain phrases potent to make my blood boil — improper influence! What old woman’s cackle is that?””Are you a young lady?””I am a thousand times better: I am an honest woman, and as...