It is the misfortune of poetry, to be seldom safely enjoyed by those who enjoy it completely.

I am excessively diverted.

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

If there is any thing disagreeable going on, men are always sure to get out of it.

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

Vanity was the beginning and the end of Sir Walter Elliot's character; vanity of person and of situation. He had been remarkably handsome in his youth; and, at fifty-four, was still a very fine man. Few women could think more of their personal appearance than he did, nor could the valet of any new made lord be more delighted with the place he held in society. He considered the blessing of beauty as inferior only to the blessing of a baronetcy; and the Sir Walter Elliott, who united these gifts, was the constant object of his warmest respect and devotion.

She had been forced into prudence in her youth, she learned romance as she grew older: the natural sequel of an unnatural beginning.