1. Education
About.com
Classic Literature

Discuss in my forum

'Sense and Sensibility' Quotes

By , About.com Guide

See More About:
  • "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."
    - Sense and Sensibility, Ch. 23

  • "Death ... a melancholy and shocking extremity."
    - Sense and Sensibility, Ch. 24

  • "I wish with all my soul his wife may plague his heart out."
    - Sense and Sensibility, Ch. 30

  • "When a young man, be he who he will, comes and makes love to a pretty girl, and promises marriage, he has no business to fly off from his word, only because he grows poor, and a richer girl is ready to have him. Why don't he, in such a case, sell his horses, let his house, turn off his servants, and make a thorough reform at once."
    - Sense and Sensibility, Ch. 30

  • "Nothing in the way of pleasure can ever be given up by the young men of this age."
    - Sense and Sensibility, Ch. 30

  • "Elinor had not needed ... to be assured of the injustice to which her sister was often led in her opinion of others, by the irritable refinement of her own mind, and the too great importance placed by her on the delicacies of a strong sensibility and the graces of a polished manner. Like half the rest of the world, if more than half there be that are clever and good, Marianne, with excellent abilities and an excellent disposition, was neither reasonable nor candid. She expected from other people the same opinions and feelings as her own, and she judged of their motives by the immediate effect of their actions on herself."
    - Sense and Sensibility, Ch. 31

  • "A man who has nothing to do with his own time has no conscience in his intrusion on that of others."
    - Sense and Sensibility, Ch. 31

  • "Life could do nothing for her, beyond giving time for a better preparation for death; and that was given."
    - Sense and Sensibility, Ch. 31

  • "She felt the loss of Willoughby's character yet more heavily than she had felt the loss of his heart."
    - Sense and Sensibility, Ch. 32

  • "A person and face, of strong, natural, sterling insignificance, though adorned in the first style of fashion."
    - Sense and Sensibility, Ch. 33

  • "There was a kind of cold-hearted selfishness on both sides, which mutually attracted them; and they sympathized with each other in an insipid propriety of demeanour, and a general want of understanding."
    - Sense and Sensibility, Ch. 34

  • "Elinor was to be the comfor/ter of others in her own distresses, no less than in theirs."
    - Sense and Sensibility, Ch. 37

  • "The world had made him extravagant and vain - extravagance and vanity had made him cold-hearted and selfish. Vanity, while seeking its own guilty triumph at the expense of another, had involved him in a real attachment, which extravagance, or at least its offspring necessity, had required to be sacrificed. Each faulty propensity in leading him to evil, had led him likewise to punishment."
    - Sense and Sensibility, Ch. 44

  • "His own enjoyment, or his own ease, was, in every particular, his ruling principle."
    - Sense and Sensibility, Ch. 47

  • "Elinor now found the difference between the expectation of an unpleasant event, however certain the mind may be told to consider it, and certainty itself. She now found that, in spite of herself, she had always admitted a hope, while Edward remained single, that something would occur to prevent his marrying Lucy; that some resolution of his own, some mediation of friends, or some more eligible opportunity of establishment for the lady, would arise to assist the happiness of all. But he was now married; and she condemned her heart for the lurking flattery which so much heightened the pain of the intelligence."
    - Sense and Sensibility, Ch. 48

©2012 About.com. All rights reserved.

A part of The New York Times Company.