Quotes from Pride and Prejudice

“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.”

The most famous opening line in English fiction, and almost everyone misreads it. The sentence pretends to state a universal truth, but the rest of the chapter shows the opposite: it is mothers of marriageable daughters who treat rich single men as fair game. Austen is writing satire, not romance. The whole novel argues against the very thing the opening pretends to assert.

“Happiness in marriage is entirely a matter of chance.”

Charlotte says this to Elizabeth early in the novel. She will later marry the absurd Mr Collins on exactly this principle. Austen does not condemn her for it: she shows it as the pragmatic choice of an unmarried woman of twenty-seven without money. The line sets up the moral question of the book, which is whether marrying for security is contemptible or simply realistic.

“A lady's imagination is very rapid; it jumps from admiration to love, from love to matrimony in a moment.”

Darcy says this lightly, almost teasing. But it is one of the few moments early in the novel when his judgement of women lines up with Austen's own social observation: courtship moves quickly because the stakes are so high. The irony is that Darcy himself will turn out to have made exactly this jump (admiration, love, the impulse to propose) only he will not admit it for another twenty chapters.

“I could easily forgive his pride, if he had not mortified mine.”

Elizabeth says this after Darcy refuses to dance with her at the Meryton ball, calling her merely tolerable. It is the single most honest line about prejudice in the novel: she is not offended on principle, she is offended personally. Austen lets Elizabeth admit it out loud, which is part of why we trust her as a heroine even when she is wrong.

“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.”

Mary is the most ridiculous of the Bennet sisters, and Austen gives her this very accurate definition for comic effect: the right idea, delivered by the wrong person, at the wrong moment. The novel itself works through this distinction. Darcy is proud (his opinion of himself), Caroline Bingley is vain (her hunger for others' opinion), and only one of them is redeemable.

“From the very beginning, from the first moment, I may almost say, of my acquaintance with you, your manners impressed me with the fullest belief of your arrogance, your conceit, and your selfish disdain of the feelings of others.”

Elizabeth's rejection of Darcy's first proposal. The sentence is famous because of how openly she names the thing he has been doing, but readers often forget that she is also completely wrong about him. The novel will spend the next twenty chapters dismantling her confidence in this judgement. It is a textbook case of the prejudice in the title.

“He is a gentleman; I am a gentleman's daughter; so far we are equal.”

Elizabeth's reply to Lady Catherine, who has come to forbid the match. It is one of the cleanest statements of self-worth in nineteenth-century fiction. Notice the precision: Elizabeth does not claim social equality with Lady Catherine, only with Darcy. She knows exactly where the line is, and she refuses to be moved one inch behind it.

“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.”

Darcy's first proposal. Note that almost half the sentences are about him fighting his feelings rather than feeling them; the actual confession is the last twelve words. He is proposing and complaining at the same time. Elizabeth's rejection in the same chapter is partly a response to this strange tone: she hears the struggle louder than the love.

“Till this moment I never knew myself.”

Spoken aloud after she reads Darcy's letter explaining his actions toward Wickham. This is the moral turning point of the novel. Elizabeth has been the smartest reader of other people for thirty-five chapters; here she discovers she has been the worst reader of herself. Austen is making a quiet argument: self-knowledge comes through being humiliated by the evidence, not through introspection.

“I have been a selfish being all my life, in practice, though not in principle.”

Darcy explains to Elizabeth, near the end, how she changed him. The line is doing something subtle: he is not saying he was a bad person, he is saying his good principles did not control his behaviour. This is the precise definition of pride that the novel has been working toward. Darcy can name it because he has, finally, stopped doing it.

“My affections and wishes are unchanged, but one word from you will silence me on this subject for ever.”

Darcy's second proposal, in a single careful sentence. Compare it with the first proposal four chapters earlier: no struggling, no complaining, no claim on her response. He has learned to ask without demanding. The economy of the line is the point: a proud man writing as a man who is no longer proud.

“I declare after all there is no enjoyment like reading! How much sooner one tires of any thing than of a book!”

Caroline Bingley says this while pretending to read, in order to attract Darcy's attention. He is reading; she is performing reading. It is one of Austen's sharpest jokes about the difference between loving books and using books as a prop. If you have ever seen the same line printed in a bookshop tote bag, that bag is, technically, a quotation from a villain.

“I have not the pleasure of understanding you.”

Elizabeth's reply to Mr Collins as he insists on proposing despite her clear refusals. The line works because of its politeness. She is not insulting him; she is using the formal register of a polite refusal to make it impossible for him to claim he was misunderstood. Austen's heroines are at their most dangerous when they sound the most civil.

“There are few people whom I really love, and still fewer of whom I think well.”

Elizabeth says this after Bingley leaves Jane. The sentence sounds like a young woman's pose, but Austen is letting Elizabeth voice a real position: love is not the same as approval. You can love someone whose judgement you mistrust (her mother, her younger sisters), and you can think well of people you do not love. The whole novel turns on this distinction.

“For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbours, and laugh at them in our turn?”

Mr Bennet to Elizabeth after the Lydia scandal has died down. It is the most quoted line of his in the novel, and the most exposing. He says it as a witty father; he means it as a man who has used wit to avoid acting for thirty years. Austen lets the charm of the line do its work, then quietly shows you the cost.