pride and prejudice quotes

"It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.
However little known the feelings or views of such a man may be on his first entering a neighborhood, this truth is so well fixed in the minds of the surrounding families, that he is considered as the rightful property of some one or other of their daughters."

Narrator

"Oh! you are a great deal too apt, you know, to like people in general. You never see a fault in anybody. All the world are good and agreeable in your eyes. I never heard you speak ill of a human being in your life."

Elizabeth Bennet

"Laugh as much as you choose, but you will not laugh me out of my opinion."

Jane Bennet

"I was given good principles, but left to follow them in pride and conceit."

Mr. Darcy

"It is particularly incumbent on those who never change their opinion, to be secure of judging properly at first."

Mr. Darcy

"Happiness in marriage is entirely a matter of chance. If the dispositions of the parties are ever so well known to each other or ever so similar beforehand, it does not advance their felicity in the least. They always continue to grow sufficiently unlike afterwards to have their share of vexation; and it is better to know as little as possible of the defects of the person with whom you are to pass your life."

Charlotte Lucas

"Without thinking highly either of men or matrimony, marriage had always been her object; it was the only honourable provision for well-educated young women of small fortune, and however uncertain of giving happiness, must be their pleasantest preservative from want."

Narrator

"They walked on, without knowing in what direction. There was too much to be thought, and felt, and said, for attention to any other objects."

Narrator

"My child, let me not have the grief of seeing you unable to respect your partner in life."

Mr. Bennet

"My love, should you not like to see a place of which you have heard so much?" said ------. "A place too, with which so many of your acquaintance are connected. Wickham passed all his youth there, you know."

Mrs. Gardiner

"Heaven and earth! - of what are you thinking? Are the shades of Pemberley to be thus polluted?"

Lady Catherine de Bourgh

"In vain I have struggled. It will not do. My feelings will not be repressed. You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you."

Mr. Darcy

"Almost as soon as I entered the house, I singled you out as the companion of my future life."

Mr. Darcy

"My good opinion once lost, is lost forever."

Mr. Darcy

"Well, my comfort is, I am sure Jane will die of a broken heart, and then he will be sorry for what he has done."

Mrs. Bennet

"That is exactly the question which I expected you to ask. A lady's imagination is very rapid; it jumps from admiration to love, from love to matrimony, in a moment. I knew you would be wishing me joy."

Mr. Darcy

"Lord! how I should like to be married before any of you! and then I would chaperon you about to all the balls."

Lydia Bennet

"I cannot fix on the hour, or the spot, or the look, or the words, which laid the foundation. It is too long ago. I was in the middle before I knew that I had begun."

Mr. Darcy

"This will not do…you never will be able to make both of them good for anything. Take your choice, but you must be satisfied with only one. There is but such a quantity of merit between them; just enough to make one good sort of man; and of late it has been shifting about pretty much. For my part, I am inclined to believe it all Darcy's; but you shall do as you choose."

Elizabeth Bennet

"For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbours, and laugh at them in our turn?"

Mr. Bennet

"Mr. Wickham is blessed with such happy manners as may ensure his making friends — whether he may be equally capable of retaining them, is less certain."

Mr. Darcy

"To this question, his daughter replied only with a laugh; and as it had been asked without the least suspicion, she was not distressed by his repeating it. Elizabeth had never been more at a loss to make her feelings appear what they were not. It was necessary to laugh when she would rather have cried."

Narrator

"A woman must have a thorough knowledge of music, singing, drawing, dancing, and the modern languages, to deserve the word; and besides all this, she must possess a certain something in her air and manner of walking, the tone of her voice, her address and expressions, or the word will be but half deserved"

Caroline Bingley

"You are perfectly right. You have employed your time much better. No one admitted to the privilege of hearing you can think anything wanting. We neither of us perform to strangers."

Mr. Darcy

"Not so hasty, if you please. I have by no means done. To all the objections I have already urged, I have still another to add. I am no stranger to the particulars of your youngest sister's infamous elopement. I know it all; that the young man's marrying her was a patched up business, at the expense of your father and uncles. And is such a girl to be my nephew's sister? Is her husband, is the son of his late father's steward, to be his brother? Heaven and earth!—of what are you thinking? Are the shades of Pemberley to be thus polluted?"

Lady Catherine de Bourgh

"I have not the smallest objection to explaining them," said he, as soon as she allowed him to speak. "You either choose this method of passing the evening because you are in each other's confidence, and have secret affairs to discuss, or because you are conscious that your figures appear to the greatest advantage in walking; if the first, I would be completely in your way, and if the second, I can admire you much better as I sit by the fire."

Mr. Darcy

"One may be continually abusive without saying anything just; but one cannot be always laughing at a man without now and then stumbling on something witty."

Elizabeth Bennet

"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."

Mary Bennet

"A person who can write a long letter with ease, cannot write ill."

Caroline Bingley

"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

"A lady's imagination is very rapid; it jumps from admiration to love, from love to matrimony in a moment."

Mr. Darcy

"There is nothing so bad as parting with one's friends. One seems too forlorn without them."

Mrs. Bennet

"A girl likes to be crossed a little in love now and then."

Mr. Bennet

"Your defect is a propensity to hate everybody."

Elizabeth Bennet

"And yours, is willfully to misunderstand them."

Mr. Darcy

"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."

Caroline Bingley

"I am only resolved to act in that manner, which will, in my own opinion, constitute my happiness, without reference to you, or to any person so wholly unconnected with me."

Elizabeth Bennet

"There is a stubbornness about me that never can bear to be frightened at the will of others. My courage always rises at every attempt to intimidate me."

Elizabeth Bennet

"She was convinced that she could have been happy with him, when it was no longer likely they should meet."

Narrator

"Till this moment I never knew myself."

Elizabeth Bennet

"She is tolerable, but not handsome enough to tempt me, and I am in no humor at present to give consequence to young ladies who are slighted by other men."

Mr. Darcy

"From the very beginning—from the first moment, I may almost say—of my acquaintance with you, your manners, impressing me with the fullest belief of your arrogance, your conceit, and your selfish distain of the feelings of others, were such as to form the groundwork of the disapprobation on which succeeding events have built so immovable a dislike; and I had not known you a month before I felt that you were the last man in the world on whom I could ever be prevailed on to marry."

Elizabeth Bennet

"We all know him to be a proud, unpleasant sort of man; but this would be nothing if you really liked him."

Mr. Bennet

"Yes, vanity is a weakness indeed. But pride - where there is a real superiority of mind, pride will be always under good regulation."

Mr. Darcy

"All! - What, all five out at once? Very odd! - And you only the second. - The younger ones out before the elder are married! - Your younger sisters must be very young?"

Lady Catherine de Bourgh

"If you will thank me, let it be for yourself alone. That the wish of giving happiness to you might add force to the other inducements which led me on, I shall not attempt to deny. But your family owe me nothing. Much as I respect them, I believe I thought only of you."

Mr. Darcy

"Your conjecture is totally wrong, I assure you. My mind was more agreeably engaged. I have been meditating on the very great pleasure which a pair of fine eyes in the face of a pretty woman can bestow."

Mr. Darcy

"The gentlemen pronounced him to be a fine figure of a man, the ladies declared he was much handsomer than Mr. Bingley, and he was looked at with great admiration for about half the evening, till his manners gave a disgust which turned the tide of his popularity; for he was discovered to be proud; to be above his company, and above being pleased; and not all his large estate in Derbyshire could then save him from having a most forbidding, disagreeable countenance, and being unworthy to be compared with his friend."

Narrator

"I am happy on every occasion to offer those little delicate compliments which are always acceptable to ladies. I have more than once observed to Lady Catherine, that her charming daughter seemed born to be a duchess, and that the most elevated rank, instead of giving her consequence, would be adorned by her. These are the kind of little things which please her ladyship, and it is a sort of attention which I conceive myself peculiarly bound to pay."

Mr. Collins

"Your arts and allurements may, in a moment of infatuation, have made him forget what he owes to himself and all his family. You may have drawn him in."

Lady Catherine de Bourgh

"He is just what a young man ought to be," said she, "sensible, good-humoured, lively; and I never saw such happy manners! - so much ease, with such perfect good breeding!"

Jane Bennet

"You and the girls may go, or you may send them by themselves, which perhaps will be still better, for as you are as handsome as any of them, Mr. Bingley might like you the best of the party."

Mr. Bennet