Sense and Sensibility

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!

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

I wish, as well as everybody else, to be perfectly happy; but, like everybody else, it must be in my own way.

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

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.

It is not everyone,' said Elinor, 'who has your passion for dead leaves.

I come here with no expectations, only to profess, now that I am at liberty to do so, that my heart is and always will be...yours.

If a book is well written, I always find it too short.

I will be calm. I will be mistress of myself.

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

To wish was to hope, and to hope was to expect

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. [...] 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.

She was stronger alone…

Do not let the behavior of others destroy your inner peace.

What do you know of my heart? What do you know of anything but your own suffering. For weeks, Marianne, I've had this pressing on me without being at liberty to speak of it to a single creature. It was forced on me by the very person whose prior claims ruined all my hope. I have endured her exultations again and again whilst knowing myself to be divided from Edward forever. Believe me, Marianne, had I not been bound to silence I could have provided proof enough of a broken heart, even for you.

Always resignation and acceptance. Always prudence and honour and duty. Elinor, where is your heart?

Eleanor went to her room "where she was free to think and be wretched.

I could not be happy with a man whose taste did not in every point coincide with my own. He must enter in all my feelings; the same books, the same music must charm us both.

I have not wanted syllables where actions have spoken so plainly.

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.

It is not what we think or feel that makes us who we are. It is what we do. Or fail to do...

Life could do nothing for her, beyond giving time for a better preparation for death.

Money can only give happiness where there is nothing else to give it.

Sometimes one is guided by what they say of themselves, and very frequently by what other people say of them, without giving oneself time to deliberate and judge." -Elinor Dashwood

She was stronger alone; and her own good sense so well supported her, that her firmness was as unshaken, her appearance of cheerfulness as invariable, as, with regrets so poignant and so fresh, it was possible for them to be.

Elinor could sit still no longer. She almost ran out of the room, and as soon as the door was closed, burst into tears of joy, which at first she thought would never cease.

..that sanguine expectation of happiness which is happiness itself

to hope was to expect