Emma

he is so very much occupied by the idea of not being in love with her, that I should not wonder if it were to end in his being so at last.

My being charming is not quite enough to induce me to marry.

One half of the world cannot understand the pleasures of the other.

... silly things do cease to be silly if they are done by sensible people in an impudent way.

There is safety in reserve, but no attraction. One cannot love a reserved person.

There are people, who the more you do for them, the less they will do for themselves.

Where there is a wish to please, one ought to overlook, and one does overlook a great deal.

A mind lively and at ease, can do with seeing nothing, and can see nothing that does not answer.

What is passable in youth is detestable in later age.

We all know the difference between the pronouns he or she and thou, the plainest spoken amongst us; we all feel the influence of a something beyond common civility in our personal intercourse with each other—a something more early implanted. We cannot give any body the disagreeable hints that we may have been very full of the hour before. We feel things differently.

Men of family would not be very fond of connecting themselves with a girl of such obscurity.

It is only by seeing women in their own homes, among their own set, just as they always are, that you can form any just judgment. Short of that, it is all guess and luck—and will generally be ill-luck. How many a man has committed himself on a short acquaintance, and rued it all the rest of his life!

She certainly had not been in the wrong, and he would never own that he had.