Mansfield Park
Immerse yourself in the world of Mansfield Park through our curated selection of quotes. Jane Austen masterfully explores themes of morality, class distinction, and moral integrity, offering readers profound insights into human nature and society.
“A fondness for reading, properly directed, must be an education in itself.”
“A large income is the best recipe for happiness I ever heard of.”
“An engaged woman is always more agreeable than a disengaged. She is satisfied with herself. Her cares are over, and she may exert all her powers of pleasing without suspicion. All is safe with a lady engaged; no harm can be done.”
“But he recommended the books which charmed her leisure hours, he encouraged her taste, and corrected her judgment; he made reading useful by talking to her of what she read, and heightened its attraction by judicious praise.”
“But indeed I would rather have nothing but tea.”
“But there certainly are not so many men of large fortune in the world as there are pretty women to deserve them.”
“Everybody likes to go their own way—to choose their own time and manner of devotion.”
“Give a girl an education and introduce her properly into the world.”
“He was in love, very much in love; and it was a love which, operating on an active, sanguine spirit, of more warmth than delicacy, made her affection appear of greater consequence, because it was withheld, and determined him to have the glory, as well as the felicity of forcing her to love him.”
“He will make you happy, Fanny, I know he will make you happy, but you will make him everything.”
“Human nature needs more lessons than a weekly sermon can convey.”
“I am worn out with civility.”
“I do not pretend to set people right, but I do see that they are often wrong.”
“I have no talent for certainty.”
“I pay very little regard,” said Mrs. Grant, “to what any young person says on the subject of marriage. If they profess a disinclination for it, I only set it down that they have not yet seen the right person.”
“I think it ought not to be set down as certain that a man must be acceptable to every woman he may happen to like himself.”
“I was quiet, but I was not blind.”
“I was so anxious to do what is right that I forgot to do what is right.”
“If any one faculty of our nature may be called more wonderful than the rest, I do think it is memory. There seems something more speakingly incomprehensible in the powers, the failures, the inequalities of memory, than in any other of our intelligences.”
“It was a gloomy prospect, and all that she could do was to throw a mist over it, and hope when the mist cleared away, she should see something else.”
“Let us have the luxury of silence.”
“Life seems nothing more than a quick succession of busy nothings.”
“No man dies of love but on the stage.”
“Nobody meant to be unkind, but nobody put themselves out of their way to secure her comfort.”
“Nobody minds having what is too good for them.”
“Nothing ever fatigues me but doing what I do not like.”
“Of course I love her, but there are as many forms of love as there are moments in time.”
“Run mad as often as you choose, but do not faint.”
“Selfishness must always be forgiven, you know, because there is no hope of a cure.”
“She was not often invited to join in the conversation of the others, nor did she desire it. Her own thoughts and reflections were habitually her best companions.”
“The season, the scene, the air, were all favourable to tenderness and sentiment.”
“There is no reason in the world why you should not be important where you are known. You have good sense, and a sweet temper, and I am sure you have a grateful heart, that could never receive kindness without hoping to return it. I do not know any better qualifications for a friend and companion.”
“There is nothing like employment, active indispensable employment, for relieving sorrow. Employment, even melancholy, may dispel melancholy.”
“There will be little rubs and disappointments everywhere, and we are all apt to expect too much; but then, if one scheme of happiness fails, human nature turns to another; if the first calculation is wrong, we make a second better: we find comfort somewhere.”
“These were reflections that required some time to soften; but time will do almost everything.”
“This was a letter to be run through eagerly, to be read deliberately, to supply matter for much reflection, and to leave everything in greater suspense than ever.”
“This would be the way to Fanny’s heart. She was not to be won by all that gallantry and wit and good-nature together could do; or, at least, she would not be won by them nearly so soon, without the assistance of sentiment and feeling, and seriousness on serious subjects.”
“Those who have not more must be satisfied with what they have.”
“We do not look in great cities for our best morality.”
“When I look out on such a night as this, I feel as if there could be neither wickedness nor sorrow in the world; and there certainly would be less of both if the sublimity of Nature were more attended to, and people were carried more out of themselves by contemplating such a scene.”
“When people are waiting, they are bad judges of time, and every half minute seems like five.”