Explore all the most famous Pride & Prejudice book quotes by Jane Austen about marriage, love, romance, and so much more. Some of them are also funny! You’ll hear from Elizabeth Bennet, Jane Bennet, Mr. and Mrs. Bennet, Mr. Darcy, and other characters in this comprehensive list.
Pride & Prejudice is Jane Austen’s most classic romance book, set in rural England at the turn of the 19th century. It follows the Bennet couple and their five very different sisters seeking love and marriage.
The heroine sister in this Jane Austen novel, Elizabeth, is smart and refuses to take on the conventional views of society. She meets Mr. Darcy, who is wealthy and arrogant, but grows to understand him more differently, as her sisters also engage in affairs of the heart.
The Most Famous Pride & Prejudice Books Quotes
Below are all the best classic book quotes from this novel, including:
- quotes about marriage
- miscellaneous quotes
- frequently asked questions
Pride & Prejudice Quotes About Marriage
“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.”
Read More: Most Popular Opening Lines in Books
“A lady’s imagination is very rapid; it jumps from admiration to love, from love to matrimony in a moment.”
“From the very beginning— from the first moment, I may almost say— of my acquaintance with you, your manners, impressing me with the fullest belief of your arrogance, your conceit, and your selfish disdain of the feelings of others, were such as to form the groundwork of disapprobation on which succeeding events have built so immovable a dislike; and I had not known you a month before I felt that you were the last man in the world whom I could ever be prevailed on to marry.”
“Do anything rather than marry without affection.”
“Happiness in marriage is entirely a matter of chance.”
“I am determined that only the deepest love will induce me into matrimony.”
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Miscellaneous Pride & Prejudice Books Quotes
“In vain have I struggled. It will not do. My feelings will not be repressed. You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you.”
“To be fond of dancing was a certain step towards falling in love.”
“He was the proudest, most disagreeable man in the world, and everybody hoped that he would never come there again.”
“I declare after all there is no enjoyment like reading! How much sooner one tires of any thing than of a book! — When I have a house of my own, I shall be miserable if I have not an excellent library.”
“Vanity and pride are different things, though the words are often used synonymously. A person may be proud without being vain. Pride relates more to our opinion of ourselves, vanity to what we would have others think of us.”
“My courage always rises with every attempt to intimidate me.”
“Angry people are not always wise.”
“My good opinion once lost, is lost forever.”
“I cannot fix on the hour, or the spot, or the look or the words, which laid the foundation. It is too long ago. I was in the middle before I knew that I had begun.”
“Is not general incivility the very essence of love?”
“‘I have been used to consider poetry as the food of love,’ said Darcy. ‘Of a fine, stout, healthy love it may. Everything nourishes what is strong already. But if it be only a slight, thin sort of inclination, I am convinced that one good sonnet will starve it entirely away.'”
“A girl likes to be crossed a little in love now and then.”
“Mr. Darcy soon drew the attention of the room by his fine, tall person, handsome features, noble mien, and the report which was in general circulation within five minutes after his entrance, of his having ten thousand a year. The gentlemen pronounced him to be a fine figure of a man, the ladies declared he was much handsomer than Mr. Bingley, and he was looked at with great admiration for about half the evening, till his manners gave a disgust which turned the tide of his popularity; for he was discovered to be proud; to be above his company, and above being pleased; and not all his large estate in Derbyshire could then save him from having a most forbidding, disagreeable countenance, and being unworthy to be compared with his friend.”
“A person who can write a long letter with ease, cannot write ill.”
“She is tolerable; but not handsome enough to tempt me; and I am in no humour at present to give consequence to young ladies who are slighted by other men. You had better return to your partner and enjoy her smiles, for you are wasting your time with me.”
“One cannot be always laughing at a man without now and then stumbling on something witty.”
“Laugh as much as you choose, but you will not laugh me out of my opinion.”
“‘He is also handsome,’ replied Elizabeth, ‘which a young man ought likewise to be, if he possibly can. His character is thereby complete.'”
“For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbors, and laugh at them in our turn?”
“There is, I believe, in every disposition a tendency to some particular evil—a natural defect, which not even the best education can overcome.”
“I could easily forgive his pride, if he had not mortified mine.”
“‘If you will thank me,’ he replied, ‘let it be for yourself alone. That the wish of giving happiness to you might add force to the other inducements which led me on, I shall not attempt to deny. But your family owe me nothing. Much as I respect them, I believe I thought only of you.'”
“Yes, vanity is a weakness indeed. But pride—where there is a real superiority of mind, pride will be always under good regulation.”
“You are mistaken, Mr. Darcy, if you suppose that the mode of your declaration affected me in any other way, than as it spared the concern which I might have felt in refusing you, had you behaved in a more gentlemanlike manner.”
“People themselves alter so much, that there is something new to be observed in them for ever.”
“In nine cases out of ten, a woman had better show more affection than she feels.”
“The power of doing anything with quickness is always prized much by the possessor, and often without any attention to the imperfection of the performance.”
“‘Your defect is a propensity to hate everybody.’ ‘And yours,’ he replied with a smile, ‘is willfully to misunderstand them.'”
“Your conjecture is totally wrong, I assure you. My mind was more agreeably engaged. I have been meditating on the very great pleasure which a pair of fine eyes in the face of a pretty woman can bestow.”
“What are young men to rocks and mountains?”
“There is nothing so bad as parting with one’s friends.”
“She hardly knew how to suppose that she could be an object of admiration to so great a man.”
“Have you any other objection than your belief of my indifference?”
“He is a gentleman, and I am a gentleman’s daughter. So far we are equal.”
“How little of permanent happiness could belong to a couple who were only brought together because their passions were stronger than their virtue.”
“I have not the pleasure of understanding you.”
“Have a little compassion on my nerves. You tear them to pieces.”
“Do not be in a hurry, the right man will come at last.”
“She began now to comprehend that he was exactly the man who, in disposition and talents, would most suit her. His understanding and temper, though unlike her own, would have answered all her wishes. It was an union that must have been to the advantage of both: by her ease and liveliness, his mind might have been softened, his manners improved; and from his judgement, information, and knowledge of the world, she must have received benefit of greater importance.”
“Every impulse of feeling should be guided by reason; and, in my opinion, exertion should always be in proportion to what is required.”
“Had I been in love, I could not have been more wretchedly blind. But vanity, not love, has been my folly. Pleased with the preference of one, and offended by the neglect of the other, on the very beginning of our aquaintance, I have courted prepossession and ignorance, and driven reason away, where either were concerned. Till this moment I never knew myself.”
“It is very often nothing but our own vanity that deceives us.”
“Everything nourishes what is strong already.”
“There are few people whom I really love, and still fewer of whom I think well. The more I see of the world, the more am I dissatisfied with it; and every day confirms my belief of the inconsistency of all human characters, and of the little dependence that can be placed on the appearance of merit or sense.”
“I am only resolved to act in that manner, which will, in my own opinion, constitute my happiness, without reference to you, or to any person so wholly unconnected with me.”
“I never could be so happy as you. Till I have your disposition, your goodness, I never can have your happiness.”
“You are too generous to trifle with me. If your feelings are still what they were last April, tell me so at once. My affections and wishes are unchanged; but one word from you will silence me on this subject for ever.”
“The distance is nothing when one has a motive.”
“Nothing is more deceitful…than the appearance of humility. It is often only carelessness of opinion, and sometimes an indirect boast.”
“Pride is a very common failing… I am convinced that it is very common indeed; that human nature is particularly prone to it, and that there are very few of us who do not cherish a feeling of self-complacency on the score of some quality or other, real or imaginary.”
“‘All this she must possess,’ added Darcy, ‘and to all this she must yet add something more substantial, in the improvement of her mind by extensive reading.'”
“It is happy for you that you possess the talent of flattering with delicacy. May I ask whether these pleasing attentions proceed from the impulse of the moment, or are they the result of previous study?”
“Affectation of candour is common enough—one meets with it everywhere. But to be candid without ostentation or design—to take the good of everybody’s character and make it still better, and say nothing of the bad—belongs to you alone.”
“Those who do not complain are never pitied.”
“Do not give way to useless alarm…though it is right to be prepared for the worst, there is no occasion to look on it as certain.”
“Think only of the past as its remembrance gives you pleasure.”
“Follies and nonsense, whims and inconsistencies, do divert me, I own, and I laugh at them whenever I can.”
“I must learn to be content with being happier than I deserve.”
“You showed me how insufficient were all my pretensions to please a woman worthy of being pleased.”
“She was convinced that she could have been happy with him, when it was no longer likely they should meet.”
“We all know him to be a proud, unpleasant sort of man; but this would be nothing if you really liked him.”
“It is particularly incumbent on those who never change their opinion, to be secure of judging properly at first.”
“I was given good principles, but left to follow them in pride and conceit.”
“You shall not, for the sake of one individual, change the meaning of principle and integrity, nor endeavour to persuade yourself or me, that selfishness is prudence, and insensibility of danger security for happiness.”
“I am the happiest creature in the world. Perhaps other people have said so before, but not one with such justice. I am happier even than Jane; she only smiles, I laugh.”
“There are very few who have heart enough to be really in love without encouragement.”
“Her heart did whisper that he had done it for her.”
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Frequently Asked Questions
The first line in the book Pride and Prejudice is one of the most famous first lines in the history of literature. It reads: “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.”
“With the Gardiners, they were always on the most intimate terms. Darcy, as well as Elizabeth, really loved them; and they were both ever sensible of the warmest gratitude towards the persons who, by bringing her into Derbyshire, had been the means of uniting them.”
Read More: Famous Final Sentences of Books
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Those are all the best Pride & Prejudice book quotes.
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