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The Best Pride and Prejudice Quotes

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Kate Scott

Staff Writer

Kate Scott is a bookstagrammer and strategic web designer serving women business owners and creative entrepreneurs. Follow her on Instagram @parchmentgirl and visit her website at katescott.co/books.

Jane Austen has given us some of the best love stories of all time, and there’s no doubt that Lizzie Bennet is her most beloved and iconic heroine. Take a moment out of your day to bask in the literary sweetness of these witty and wise Pride and Prejudice quotes.

32 of the Best Pride and Prejudice Quotes

Sound Observations

“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.”

“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.”

“There is, I believe, in every disposition a tendency to some particular evil—a natural defect, which not even the best education can overcome.”

“Nothing is more deceitful…than the appearance of humility. It is often only carelessness of opinion, and sometimes an indirect boast.”

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

“Is not general incivility the very essence of love?”

“Those who do not complain are never pitied.”

“To be fond of dancing was a certain step towards falling in love.”

“For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbors, and laugh at them in our turn?”

“Angry people are not always wise.”

“But people themselves alter so much, that there is something new to be observed in them for ever.”

“The distance is nothing when one has motive.”

Sage Advice

“Do not give way to useless alarm…though it is right to be prepared for the worst, there is no occasion to look on it as certain.”

“Think only of the past as its remembrance gives you pleasure.”

“Do anything rather than marry without affection.”

Live Your Best Life Now

“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.”

“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.”

“Follies and nonsense, whims and inconsistencies, do divert me, I own, and I laugh at them whenever I can.”

“What are young men to rocks and mountains?”

“I must learn to be content with being happier than I deserve.”

“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.”

Matters of the Heart

“You showed me how insufficient were all my pretensions to please a woman worthy of being pleased.”

“You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you.”

“Their eyes instantly met, and the cheeks of both were overspread with the deepest blush.”

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

“Do not consider me now as an elegant female, intending to play you, but as a rational creature, speaking the truth from her heart.”

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

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

“Till this moment I never knew myself.”

“My good opinion once lost, is lost forever.”

Solid Burns

“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.”

“It is happy for you that you possess the talent of flattering with delicacy. May I ask whether these pleasing attentions proceed from the impulse of the moment, or are the result of previous study?”

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