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A Woman never looks better than on horseback...
Jane Austen
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In Paragon we met Mrs. Foley and Mrs. Dowdeswell with her yellow shawl airing out, and at the bottom of Kingsdown Hill we met a gentleman in a buggy, who, on minute examination, turned out to be Dr. Hall - and Dr. Hall in such very deep mourning that either his mother, his wife, or himself must be dead.
Jane Austen
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I am sure," cried Catherine, "I did not mean to say anything wrong; but it is a nice book, and why should not I call it so?" "Very true," said Henry, "and this is a very nice day, and we are taking a very nice walk, and you are two very nice young ladies. Oh! It is a very nice word indeed! It does for everything. Originally perhaps it was applied only to express neatness, propriety, delicacy, or refinement—people were nice in their dress, in their sentiments, or their choice. But now every commendation on every subject is comprised in that one word.
Jane Austen
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Sometimes the last person on earth you want to be with is the one person you can't be without.
Jane Austen
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You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope. Tell me not that I am too late, that such precious feelings are gone for ever. I offer myself to you again with a heart even more your own than when you almost broke it, eight and a half years ago. Dare not say that a man forgets sooner than woman, that his love has an earlier death. I have loved none but you. Unjust I may have been, weak and resentful I have been, but never inconstant.
Jane Austen
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There is, I believe, in every disposition a tendency to some particular evil, a natural defect, which not even the best education can overcome." "And your defect is a propensity to hate everybody." "And yours," he replied with a smile, "is wilfully to misunderstand them.
Jane Austen
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We saw a countless number of post-chaises full of boys pass by yesterday morning - full of future heroes, legislators, fools, and villains. You have never thanked me for my last letter, which went by the cheese. I cannot bear not to be thanked.
Jane Austen
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It is only a novel... or, in short, only some work in which the greatest powers of the mind are displayed, in which the most thorough knowledge of human nature, the happiest delineation of its varieties, the liveliest effusions of wit and humour, are conveyed to the world in the best-chosen language
Jane Austen
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But it is very foolish to ask questions about any young ladies — about any three sisters just grown up; for one knows, without being told, exactly what they are — all very accomplished and pleasing, and one very pretty. There is a beauty in every family. — It is a regular thing...
Jane Austen
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When the evening was over, Anne could not be amused…nor could she help fearing, on more serious reflection, that, like many other great moralists and preachers, she had been eloquent on a point in which her own conduct would ill bear examination.
Jane Austen
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We are to have a tiny party here tonight. I hate tiny parties, they force one into constant exertion.
Jane Austen
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I was quiet but I was not blind.
Jane Austen
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I have not the pleasure of understanding you.
Jane Austen
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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.
Jane Austen
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Devereux Forester's being ruined by his vanity is extremely good, but I wish you would not let him plunge into a 'vortex of dissipation.' I do not object to the thing, but I cannot bear the expression; it is such thorough novel slang, and so old that I daresay Adam met with it in the first novel he opened.
Jane Austen
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I do not want people to be very agreeable, as it saves me the trouble of liking them a great deal.
Jane Austen
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I can recollect nothing more to say at present; perhaps breakfast may assist my ideas. I was deceived - my breakfast supplied only two ideas - that the rolls were good and the butter bad.
Jane Austen
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To be fond of dancing was a certain step towards falling in love.
Jane Austen
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She was feeling, thinking, trembling about everything; agitated, happy, miserable, infinitely obliged, absolutely angry.
Jane Austen
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A large income is the best recipe for happiness I ever heard of.
Jane Austen
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I cannot make speeches, Emma...If I loved you less, I might be able to talk about it more. But you know what I am. You hear nothing but truth from me. I have blamed you, and lectured you, and you have borne it as no other woman in England would have borne it.
Jane Austen
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I cannot think well of a man who sports with any woman's feelings; and there may often be a great deal more suffered than a stander-by can judge of.
Jane Austen
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It is particularly incumbent on those who never change their opinion, to be secure of judging properly at first.
Jane Austen
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Could there be finer symptoms? Is not general incivility the very essence of love?
Jane Austen
