Emma – perhaps Jane Austen’s most complex, subtle and complete novel – was published on 23 December 1815. As with most of Austen’s works, it’s full of gems that are often ironically brilliant and applicable to modern life, and sometimes amusingly dated – but always worth revisiting. To celebrate the 200th anniversary of its publication, we’re looking back at some of our favourite quotes. Which are yours? Let us know in the comments.
On love
It is not every man’s fate to marry the woman who loves him best.
I lay it down as a general rule, Harriet, that if a woman doubts as to whether she should accept a man or not, she certainly ought to refuse him. If she can hesitate as to ‘Yes,’ she ought to say ‘No’ directly. It is not a state to be safely entered into with doubtful feelings, with half a heart.
If I loved you less, I might be able to talk about it more.
Time will generally lessen the interest of every attachment not within the daily circle.
I certainly will not persuade myself to feel more than I do. I am quite enough in love. I should be sorry to be more.
It was foolish, it was wrong, to take so active a part in bringing any two people together.
On daily life
Why not seize the pleasure at once? How often is happiness destroyed by preparation, foolish preparation!
If things are going untowardly one month, they are sure to mend the next.
I don’t approve of surprises. The pleasure is never enhanced and the inconvenience is considerable.
On friendship
It’s such a happiness when good people get together.
One cannot creep upon a journey; one cannot help getting on faster than one has planned: and the pleasure of coming in upon one’s friends before the look-out begins is worth a great deal more than any little exertion it needs.
At Christmas every body invites their friends and thinks little of even the worst weather.
On culture
Without music, life would be a blank to me.
It may be possible to do without dancing entirely. Instances have been known of young people passing many, many months successively, without being at any ball of any description, and no material injury accrue either to body or mind; but when a beginning is made – when the felicities of rapid motion have once been, though slightly, felt – it must be a very heavy set that does not ask for more.
On social life
I always deserve the best treatment because I never put up with any other.
On human behaviour
There are people, who the more you do for them, the less they will do for themselves.
Wickedness is always wickedness, but folly is not always folly.
That is the case with us all, papa. One half of the world cannot understand the pleasures of the other.
