Quotes From Sense & Sensibility

Over the summer I reread Sense & Sensibility for the first time. It was the first Jane Austen book that I read many a years ago, before I ever had this blog or any notion of doing something like this. As usual, I collected some of my favourite quotes from the book to share with you.

They're Just Like Me

When I was going over what ones I wanted to include I found a lot of quotes that I wrote "-me" after, indicating that I thought the character speaking or being spoken of was like myself (in some way). And so I thought I would begin with all of those.

Marianne: “’Mama, the more I see of the world, the more I am convinced that I shall never see a man whom I can really love’” (14).

Again in this case I am Marianne: “’I hope, Marianne,’ continued Elinor, ‘you do not consider him [Edward] as deficient in general taste. Indeed, I think I may say that you cannot, for you behaviour to him is perfectly cordial, and if that were your opinion, I am sure you could never be civil to him’” (15).

Talking about Marianne: “‘she would buy them all over and over again; she would buy up every copy, I believe, to prevent their falling into unworthy hands; and she would have every book that tells her how to admire an old twisted tree’” (70).

Edward: “‘I never wish to offend, but I am so foolishly shy, that I often seem negligent, when I am only kept back by my natural awkwardness’” (71).

On Edward & Elinor (when I read the first half I thought that this was just like me and my friend, until it gets to... well you'll see): “for though a very few hours spent in the hard labour of incessant talking will dispatch more subjects than can really be in common between any two rational creatures, yet with lovers it is different. Between them no subject is finished, no communication is even made, till it had been made at least twenty times over” (276).

I will never be over someone saying that young people cannot relate to Elinor because there is so much that she says and does throughout the book that I've marked as "-me" moments. For more on that, read this.

More Quotes

The iconic: “‘Seven years would be insufficient to make some people acquainted with each other, and seven days are more than enough for others’” (45).

“‘Margaret,’ said Marianne with great warmth, ‘you know that all this [Edward, and specifically Elinor being in love with him] is an invention of your own, and that there is no such person in existence.’ ‘Well then he is lately dead, Marianne…’” (47).

“common sense, common care, common prudence, were all sunk in Mrs. Dashwood’s romantic delicacy” (64).

“’The woods and walks thickly covered with dead leaves.’ ‘Oh!’ cried Marianne, ‘with that transporting sensations have I formerly seen them fall! How have I delighted, as I walked, to see them driven in shower about me by the wind! What feelings have they, the season, the air altogether inspired!…’ ‘It is not every one,’ said Elinor, ‘who had your passion for dead leaves’” (67).

Marianne begins: “‘What have wealth or grandeur to do with happiness?’ ‘Grandeur has but little,’ said Elinor, ‘but wealth has much to do with it.’ ‘Elinor, for shame!’ said Marianne; ‘money can only give happiness where there is nothing else to give it’” (69). This is such a great moment that shows the thesis of most of Austen's works.

“‘As for the navy [the profession], it had fashion on its side’” (77-78). Okay so apparently the navy was fashionable?

On Willoughby: “The world had made him extravagant and vain—Extravagance and vanity had made him cold-hearted and selfish” (251).

Also on Willoughby: “‘he regrets what he had done. And why does he regret it?—Because he finds it has not answered towards himself. It has not made him happy’” (266). And that is how most "villians" in Austen find themselves in the end... is it not?