Lecciones de Jane Austen para azotados

I abhor every common-place phrase by which wit is intended; and 'setting one's cap at a man' or 'making a conquest,' are the most odious of all. Their tendency is gross and illiberal; and if their construction could ever be deemed clever, time has long ago destroyed all its ingenuity.

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...and her face was so lovely, that when in the common cant of praise she was called a beautiful girl, truth was less violently outraged than usually happens.

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Marianne would have thought herself very inexcusable had she been able to sleep at all the first night after parting from Willoughby. She would have been ashamed to look her family in the face the next morning, had she not risen from her bed in more need of repose than when she lay down on it.

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"You have no ambition, I well know. Your wishes are all moderate."
"As moderate as those of the rest of the world, I believe. I wish as well as every body else to be perfectly happy; but like every body else it must be in my own way. Greatness will not make me so."

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Money can only give happiness where there is nothing else to give it.

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"I do not know I contradicted any body in calling your mother ill-bred."

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"To your sister I wish all imaginable happiness; to Willoughby that he may endeavour to deserve her."

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"Go to him, Elinor," she cried, as soon as she could speak, "and force him to come to me. Tell him I must see him again--must speak to him instantly.--I cannot rest--I shall not have a moment's peace till this is explained--some dreadful misapprehension or other.--Oh go to him this moment."

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Nothing in the way of pleasure can ever be given up by the young men of this age.

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Elinor agreed to it all, for she did not think he deserved the compliment of rational opposition.

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And after all, Marianne, after all that is bewitching in the idea of a single and constant attachment, and all that can be said of one's happiness depending entirely on any particular person, it is not meant--it is not fit--it is not possible that it should be so.--Edward will marry Lucy; he will marry a woman superior in person and understanding to half her sex; and time and habit will teach him to forget that he ever thought another superior to her.

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"The lady, I suppose, has no choice in the affair."
"Choice!--how do you mean?"--
"I only mean, that I suppose from your manner of speaking, it must be the same to Miss Morton whether she marry Edward or Robert."

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...and Marianne, who had the knack of finding her way in every house to the library, however ir might be avoided by the family in general, soon procured herself a book.

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"The whole of his behaviour," replied Elinor, "from the beginning to the end of the affair, has been grounded on selfishness. It was selfishness which first made him sport with your affections; which afterwards, when his own were engaged, made him delay the confession of it, and which finally carried him from Barton. His own enjoyment, or his own ease, was, in every particular, his ruling principle."

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Elinor found the difference between the expectation of an unpleasant event, however certain the mind may be told to consider it, and certainty itself.

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Marianne Dashwood was born to an extraordinary fate. She was born to discover the falsehood of her own opinions, and to counteract, by her conduct, her most favourite maxims.