'Sense and Sensibility' Quotes

Jane Austen published Sense and Sensibility in 1811--it was her first published novel. She's also famous for Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park, and a number of other novels in the Romantic Period of English Literature. Here are some quotes from Sense and Sensibility.

• "They gave themselves up wholly to their sorrow, seeking increase of wretchedness in every reflection that could afford it, and resolved against ever admitting consolation in future."
  - Sense and Sensibility, Ch. 1
  
  
• "People always live forever when there is an annuity to be paid them."
  - Sense and Sensibility, Ch. 2
  
  
• "An annuity is a very serious business."
  - Sense and Sensibility, Ch. 2
  
  
• "He was not handsome, and his manners required intimacy to make them pleasing. He was too diffident to do justice to himself; but when his natural shyness was overcome, his behaviour gave every indication of an open, affectionate heart."
  - Sense and Sensibility, Ch. 3
  
  
• "On every formal visit a child ought to be of the party, by way of provision for discourse."
  - Sense and Sensibility, Ch. 6
  
  
• "In hastily forming and giving his opinion of other people, in sacrificing general politeness to the enjoyment of undivided attention where his heart is engaged, and in slighting too easily the forms of worldly propriety, he displayed a want of caution which Elinor could not approve."
  - Sense and Sensibility, Ch. 10
  
  
• "Sense will always have attractions for me."
  - Sense and Sensibility, Ch. 10
  
  
• "When he was present she had no eyes for anyone else. Everything he did was right. Everything he said was clever. If their evenings at the Park were concluded with cards, he cheated himself and all the rest of the party to get her a good hand. If dancing formed the amusement of the night, they were partners for half the time; and when obliged to separate for a couple of dances, were careful to stand together, and scarcely spoke a word to anybody else. Such conduct made them, of course, most exceedingly laughed at; but ridicule could not shame, and seemed hardly to provoke them."
  - Sense and Sensibility, Ch. 11
  
  
• "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."
  - Sense and Sensibility, Ch. 11
  
  
• "When the romantic refinements of a young mind are obliged to give way, how frequently are they succeeded by such opinions as are but too common and too dangerous!"
  - Sense and Sensibility, Ch. 11
  
  
• "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."
  - Sense and Sensibility, Ch. 12
  
  
• "The pleasantness of an employment does not always evince its propriety."
  - Sense and Sensibility, Ch. 13
  
  
• "At my time of life opinions are tolerably fixed. It is not likely that I should now see or hear anything to change them."
  - Sense and Sensibility, Ch. 17
  
  
• "A fond mother ... in pursuit of praise for her children, the most rapacious of human beings, is likewise the most credulous; her demands are exorbitant; but she will swallow anything."
  - Sense and Sensibility, Ch. 21
  
  
• "It was impossible for her to say what she did not feel, however trivial the occasion; and upon Elinor therefore the whole task of telling lies when politeness required it, always fell."
  - Sense and Sensibility, Ch. 21