Emi > Emi's Quotes

“The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid.”
― Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey

“For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbors, and laugh at them in our turn?”
― Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

“After all, grown-ups always underestimate children. Children never underestimate each other.”
― Robin Stevens, Mistletoe and Murder

“That is the problem with imagination – the more you use it, the more you see that the world in your head is not really the world you live in at all.”
― Robin Stevens, A Spoonful of Murder

“Growing up, I thought, seemed to be something that mostly happened when you weren’t looking.”
― Robin Stevens, A Spoonful of Murder

“I realized all over again how odd the English are. No matter how bad things get, they can always make light of them.”
― Robin Stevens, Mistletoe and Murder

“Remember, we can judge better by the conduct of people towards others than by their manner towards ourselves.”
― Maria Edgeworth, The Absentee

“What a treasure, to meet with any thing a new heart-- all hearts, nowadays, are secondhand at best.”
― Maria Edgeworth, Belinda

“When people are warm, they cannot stand picking terms.”
― Maria Edgeworth, Helen

“But don't you know that girls never think of what they are talking about, or rather never talk of what they are thinking about? And they have always ten times more to say to the man they don't care for, than to him they do.”
― Maria Edgeworth

“It is sometimes fortunate, that the means which are taken to produce certain effects upon the mind have a tendency directly opposite to what is expected.”
― Maria Edgeworth, Belinda

“Make it a rule, you know, to believe only half the world says.”
― Maria Edgeworth, The Absentee

“I wish," said the old lady, "for her own sake, for the sake of her family, and for the sake of her reputation, that my lady Delacour had fewer admirers, and more friends."

"Women, who have met with so many admirers, seldom meet with many friends," said lady Anne.

"No," said Mrs. Delacour, "for they seldom are wise enough to know their value."

"We learn the value of all things, but especially of friends, by experience," said lady Anne, "and it is no wonder, therefore, that those who have little experience of the pleasures of friendship should not be wise enough to know their value.”
― Maria Edgeworth, Belinda

“First loves are not necessarily more foolish than others; but chances are certainly against them. Proximity of time or place, a variety of accidental circumstances more than the essential merits of the object, often produce what is called first love. From poetry or romance, young people usually form their early ideas of love before they have actually felt the passion; and the image they have in their own minds of the beau ideal is cast upon the first object they afterward behold. This, if I may be allowed the expression is Cupid's Fata Morgana. Deluded mortals are in ecstasy whilst the illusion lasts, and in despair when it vanishes.”
― Maria Edgeworth, Belinda

“I do not want people to be very agreeable, as it saves me the trouble of liking them a great deal.”
― Jane Austen, Jane Austen's Letters

“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.”
― Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

“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 am I 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.”
― Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

“Angry people are not always wise.”
― Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

“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.”
― Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

“but for my own part, if a book is well written, I always find it too short.”
― Jane Austen

“It isn't what we say or think that defines us, but what we do.”
― Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility

“Silly things do cease to be silly if they are done by sensible people in an impudent way.”
― Jane Austen, Emma

“Friendship is certainly the finest balm for the pangs of disappointed love.”
― Jane Austen

“My idea of good company...is the company of clever, well-informed people, who have a great deal of conversation; that is what I call good company.'
'You are mistaken,' said he gently, 'that is not good company, that is the best.”
― Jane Austen, Persuasion

“You must learn some of my philosophy. Think only of the past as its remembrance gives you pleasure.”
― Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

“It is only a novel... or, in short, only some work in which the greatest powers of the mind are displayed, in which the most thorough knowledge of human nature, the happiest delineation of its varieties, the liveliest effusions of wit and humour, are conveyed to the world in the best-chosen language”
― Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey

“Life seems but a quick succession of busy nothings.”
― Jane Austen, Mansfield Park

“Seldom, very seldom, does complete truth belong to any human disclosure; seldom can it happen that something is not a little disguised or a little mistaken.”
― Jane Austen, Emma

“There are people, who the more you do for them, the less they will do for themselves.”
― Jane Austen, Emma

“A woman, especially if she have the misfortune of knowing anything, should conceal it as well as she can.”
― Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey