Dress is at all times a frivolous distinction, and excessive solicitude about it often destroys its own aim.

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.

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

If a woman conceals her affection with the same skill from the object of it, she may lose the opportunity of fixing him; and it will then be but poor consolation to believe the world equally in the dark. There is so much of gratitude or vanity in almost any attachment, that it is not safe to leave any to itself. We can all begin ‘freely’- as light preference is natural enough; but there are very few of us who have a heart enough to be really in love without encouragement.

I have no pretensions whatever to that kind of elegance which consists in tormenting a respectable man.

Nothing ever fatigues me, but doing what I do not like.

Those who have not more must be satisfied with what they have.