How to Live and Love Like a Jane Austen Heroine

"I always deserve the best treatment because I never put up with any other."

— Emma Woodhouse, Emma

"I could easily forgive his pride, if he had not mortified mine."

— Elizabeth Bennet, Pride and Prejudice

"What have wealth or grandeur to do with happiness?"

— Marianne Dashwood, Sense and Sensibility

"It is not time or opportunity that is to determine intimacy; it is disposition alone. Seven years would be insufficient to make some people acquainted with each other, and seven days are more than enough for others."

— Marianne Dashwood, Sense and Sensibility

"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."

— Elizabeth Bennet, Pride and Prejudice

"The more I know of the world, the more I am convinced that I shall never see a man whom I can really love. I require so much!"

— Marianne Dashwood, Sense and Sensibility

"Were I to fall in love, indeed, it would be a different thing! But I have never been in love; it is not my way, or my nature, and I do not think I ever shall."

— Emma Woodhouse, Emma

"I mean to be too rich to lament or to feel anything of the sort. A large income is the best recipe for happiness I ever heard of. It certainly may secure all the myrtle and turkey part of it."

— Mary Crawford, Mansfield Park

"My fingers 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 practicing. It is not that I do not believe my fingers as capable as any other woman's of superior execution."

— Elizabeth Bennet, Pride and Prejudice

"If I could but know his heart, everything would become easy."

— Marianne Dashwood, Sense and Sensibility

"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."

— Emma Woodhouse, Emma

"I would have everybody marry if they can do it properly: I do not like to have people throw themselves away; but everybody should marry as soon as they can do it to advantage.”

— Mary Crawford, Mansfield Park

"I declare after all there is no enjoyment like reading! How much sooner one tires of any thing than of a book! When I have a house of my own, I shall be miserable if I have not an excellent library."

— Miss Bingley, Pride and Prejudice