Sense and Sensibility

Sir John was delighted; for to a man, whose prevailing anxiety was the dread of being alone, the acquisition of two, to the number of inhabitants in London, was something.

He was not handsome, and his manners required intimacy to make them pleasing. He was too diffident to do justice to himself; but when his natural shyness was overcome, his behaviour gave every indication of an open, affectionate heart.

Know your own happiness. You want nothing but patience; or give it a more fascinating name: call it hope.

[...] mindful of the feelings of others; and much was said on the subject of rain by both of them [to change topic].

To hear those beautiful lines which have frequently almost driven me wild, pronounced with such impenetrable calmness, such dreadful indifference!

[...] an earnest, an unceasing attention to self-interest, however its progress may be apparently obstructed, will do in securing every advantage of fortune, with no other sacrifice than that of time and conscience.

Brandon is just the kind of man [...] whom everybody speaks well of, and nobody cares about; whom all are delighted to see, and nobody remembers to talk to.

They gave themselves up wholly to their sorrow, seeking increase of wretchedness in every reflection that could afford it, and resolved against ever admitting consolation in future.

Elinor agreed with it all, for she did not think he deserved the compliment of rational opposition.

He was not an ill-disposed young man, unless to be rather cold hearted, and rather selfish, is to be ill-disposed.

[...] people always live for ever when there is any annuity to be paid them.

I did not then know what it was to love [...] had I really loved, could I have sacrificed my feelings to vanity, to avarice?

I never wish to offend, but I am so foolishly shy, that I often seem negligent, when I am only kept back by my natural awkwardness.

The pleasantness of an employment does not always evince its propriety.

Yet there is something so amiable in the prejudices of a young mind, that one is sorry to see them give way to the reception of more general opinions.

There was a kind of cold hearted selfishness on both sides, which mutually attracted them; and they sympathised with each other in an insipid propriety of demeanour, and a general want of understanding.

Nothing gave any symptom of that indigence [...] – no poverty of any kind, except of conversation, appeared – but there, the deficiency was considerable.

His own enjoyment, or his own ease, was, in every particular, his ruling principle.

Shyness is only the effect of a sense of inferiority in some way or other. If I could persuade myself that my manners were perfectly easy and graceful, I should not be shy.

Fortunately for those who pay their court through such foibles, a fond mother, though, in pursuit of praise for her children, the most rapacious of human beings, is likewise the most credulous; her demands are exorbitant; but she will swallow any thing...