Quotes from book

Mansfield Park

“Everybody likes to go their own way–to choose their own time and manner of devotion.”

“I was quiet, but I was not blind.”

“The enthusiasm of a woman's love is even beyond the biographer's.”

“To sit in the shade on a fine day, and look upon verdure is the most perfect refreshment.”

“Let other pens dwell on guilt and misery.”

“Let other pens dwell on guilt and misery. I quit such odious subjects as soon as I can, impatient to restore everybody not greatly in fault themselves to tolerable comfort, and to have done with all the rest.”

“Sitting with her on Sunday evening — a wet Sunday evening — the very time of all others when if a friend is at hand the heart must be opened, and every thing told…”

“A fondness for reading, properly directed, must be an education in itself.”

“But there certainly are not so many men of large fortune in the world as there are pretty women to deserve them.”

“It is a lovely night, and they are much to be pitied who have not been taught to feel, in some degree, as you do; who have not, at least, been given a taste for Nature in early life. They lose a great deal.”

“it will, I believe, be everywhere found, that as the clergy are, or are not what they ought to be, so are the rest of the nation.”

“We do not look in great cities for our best morality.”

“An engaged woman is always more agreeable than a disengaged. She is satisfied with herself. Her cares are over, and she feels that she may exert all her powers of pleasing without suspicion. All is safe with a lady engaged: no harm can be done.”

“Of various admirals I could tell you a great deal: of them and their flags, and the gradation of their pay, and their bickerings and jealousies. But, in general, I can assure you that they are all passed over, and all very ill used. Certainly, my home at my uncle’s brought me acquainted with a circle of admirals. Of Rears and Vices I saw enough. Now do not be suspecting me of a pun, I entreat.”

“I speak what appears to me the general opinion; and where an opinion is general, it is usually correct.”

“She was of course only too good for him; but as nobody minds having what is too good for them, he was very steadily earnest in the pursuit of the blessing…”

“A large income is the best recipe for happiness I ever heard of.”