There is no charm equal to tenderness of heart.
Emma thinks this to herself after her friend Harriet Smith shows her affection, and she goes on to decide that warmth and tenderness of heart “will beat all the clearness of head in the world, for attraction”. The novel was published in December 1815, though the title page is dated 1816.
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.
All the privilege I claim for my own sex (it is not a very enviable one; you need not covet it), is that of loving longest, when existence or when hope is gone.
You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope.
A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.
A house divided against itself cannot stand.
The rank is but the guinea’s stamp, / The Man’s the gowd for a’ that.