Quotes from Pride and Prejudice

Quotes from Pride and Prejudice that spoke to me particularly. I haven't included context, but fans of the book can guess which scenes these lines are from.

• think only of the past as its remembrance gives you pleasure.
• If you were to give me forty such men, I never could be as happy as you. Till I have your disposition , your goodness,I never can have your happiness.
• And this said she, " is the end of all his friends anxious circumspection! Of all his sisters falsehood and contrivance! The happiest, wisest, most reasonable end!"
• If gratitude and esteem are good foundations of affection, Elizabeth's change of sentiment will be neither improbable nor faulty. 
• And in the imprudence of anger
• But perhaps he may be a bit whimsical in his civilities. Great men often are; and therefore I shall not take him at his word about fishing, as he might change his mind another day, and warn me off his grounds.
• Respect, esteem and confidence had vanished forever.. she endeavored to forget what she could not overlook, and to banish from her thoughts that continual breach of conjugal obligation and decorum which in exposing his wife to the contempt of her own children, was so highly reprehensible.
• Such squeamish youths as cannot bear to be connected with a little absurdity are not worth a regret.
• One has got all the goodness, and the other all the appearance of it
• She was now struck with the impropriety of such communications to a stranger, and wondered it had escaped her before.
• She tried to recollect some instance of goodness , some distinguished trait of integrity or benevolence. But no such recollection befriended her.
• He had ruined for a while every hope of happiness for the most affectionate, generous heart in the world 
• Mrs Collins did not think it right to press the subject, from the danger of raising expectations which might only end in disappointment.
• She likes the distinction of rank preserved.
• Every view was pointed out with a minuteness which left beauty behind.
• Where does discretion end and avarice begin?
• A man in distressed circumstances has not time for all those elegant decorums which other people may observe.
• All was joy and kindness 
• Is not general incivility the very essence of love?
• There are few people I love, and still fewer of whom I think well. The more I see of the world, the more am I dissatisfied with it; and every day confirms my belief of the inconsistency of all human characters, and of the little dependence that can be placed on the appearance of either merit or sense.
• The wisest and the best of men, nay, the wisest and best of their actions, may be rendered ridiculous by a person whose first object in life is a joke. Certainly replied Elizabeth-there are such people but I hope Iam not one of them. I hope I never ridicule what is wise or good.
• To yield without conviction is no compliment to the understanding of either.
• The power of doing anything with quickness is always much prized by the possessor , and often without any attention to the imperfection of the performance.
• Of a fine healthy love it may- every thing nourishes what is strong already. But if it be only a slight thin sort of inclination, Iam convinced that one good sonnet will starve it entirely away.

From PD James "The private patient"

-His life was a mess. Some part of his nature, timid, indolent, lacking in confidence, had led him into this pattern of indecision, of leaving things to sort themselves out, as if he put faith in a benevlovent providence which would operate on his behalf if left alone.

-You surely understand one thing, the need to do what every instinct of your body tells you is ordained for you.

-Don't we all at some time or another make a decision which we know is absolutely right, the assurance that some enterprise, some change, is imperative? And even if it fails, to resist it will be a greater failure. I suppose some people would see that as a call from God.

-Life is too precious and too short to waste on people we don't care for, and much to precious to give up on love.

-A garden she could make and cherish, a useful job that she could do without strain with people she respected...

-"I like you, I respect and admire you. I'm never bored on irritated when we're together, and we share the same passion for the house, and when I return here and you're not about I feel an unease which is difficult to explain. Its a sense that there's something lacking, something missing. Can you call that love? Is it enough? It is for me, is it for you? Do you want time to think about it ?" And now she turned to him, "Asking for time would be play-acting. It is enough".

From eat pray love

I have been thinking that I need to consciously divert my mind from negative thoughts and focus on things that move my life forward. Iam ruining my own potential by corrosive thoughts.

- as smoking is to the lungs, so is resentment to the soul
- god dwells within you as you yourself, exactly the way you are.
-to know god, you need only to renounce one thing -your sense of division from god. Otherwise, just stay as you were made, within your natural character.

From "Elegance of the Hedgehog"

• Thus the television in the front room, guardian of my clandestine activities, could bleat away and I was no longer forced to listen inane nonsense fit for the brain of a clam
• With the exception of love, friendship and the beauty of Art, I don't see much else that can nurture human life.
• I have read so many books.... and yet , like most autodidacts, Iam never quite sure of what I've gained from them. There are days when I feel I have been able to grasp all there to know in one single gaze, as if invisible branches suddenly spring out of nowhere, waving together all the disparate strands of my reading - and then suddenly the meaning escapes, the essence evaporates, they seem to flee further with each subsequent reading.
• Nothing is harder or more unfair than human reality: humans live in a world where its words and not deeds that have power, where the ultimate skill is the mastery of language. This is a terrible thing because basically we are primates who've been programmed to eat, sleep, reproduce , conquer and make our territory safe, and the ones who are most gifted at that, always get screwed by the others, the fine talkers. This is a terrible insult to our animal nature, a sort of perversion or a deep contradiction.
• Because in town it is the dogs who have their masters on a leash. though no one seems to have caught on to thew fact.If you have voluntarily saddled yourself with a dog that you'll have to walk twice a day, come rain wind or snow, that is as good as as having a leash around your own neck.
• From the very start Colombe and I have been at war because as far as Colombe is concerned, life is a permanent battle where you can win only by destroying the other guy. She cannot feel safe if she hasn;t crushed her adversaries and reduced their territory to the meanest share. For some obscure reason Colombe, who most of the time is totally insensitive to what's going on with other people, has figured out that what I dread more than anything else in life is noise. That silence helps you to go inward, that anyone who is interested in something more than just life outside actually needs silence: this is something she is not capable of understanding, because her inner space is as chaotic and noisy as the street outside. But in any case she figured it out so all day long she makes noise. Since she can't invade anything else, she invades my personal auditory space, and ruins my life from morning to night.
• and then, for the price of sixty-three euros, I had some fillets of mullet in curry and then for thirty-four euros, the least evil thing I could find on the menu: a bitter chocolate fondant. Let me tell you: at that price, I would have preferred a year';s subscription to McDonald's. At least its in bad taste without being pretentious.
• Teas and mangas: something elegant and enchanting, instead of adult power struggles and their sad aggressiveness.
• But never again will I see those I love, and if that is what dying is all about, then it really is the tragedy they say it is.
• I understood I was suffering because I couldn't make anyone else around me feel better. I understood that I have a grudge against Papa, Maman and above all Colombe because I'm incapable of being useful to them.
• I was having breakfast and looking at the bouquet on the kitchen counter.I don't believe I was thinking of anything.I was alone, and calm, and empty. So I was able to take it in. There was a little sound, a sort of quivering in the air that went "shhh" very very very quietly: a tiny rosebud on a little broken stem that dropped onto he counter. The moment it touched the surface it went "puff", a "puff" of the ultrasonic variety, for the ears of mice alone, or for human ears when everything is very very very silent. .. and I have been lucky because this morning all the conditions were ripe: an empty mind, a calm house, lovely roses, a rosebud dropping. Because beauty consists of its own passing, just as we reach for it. Its the ephemeral configuration of things in the moment when you can see both their beauty and their death.
• What is the purpose of intelligence if not to serve others? And I'm not referring to the false servitude that high-ranking state - employed flunkeys exhibit so proudly, as if it were a badge of virtue: The facade of humility they wear is nothing more than vanity or disdain.
• Instead privilege brings with it true obligations. If you belong to the closed inner sanctum of the elite, you must serve in equal proportion to the glory and ease of material existence you derive from belonging to that inner sanctum.
• I have always been fascinated by the abnegation with which we human beings are capable of devoting a great deal of energy to the quest for nothing and to the rehashing of useless and absurd ideas. I spoke with a young doctoral candidate in Greek patristics and wondered how so much youth could be squandered in the service of nothingness. When you consider that a primate's major preoccupations are sex, territory and hierarchy, spending one's time reflecting on the meaning of prayer for Augustine of Hippo seems a relatively futile exercise.
• Literature for instance serves a pragmatic purpose. Like any for of Art, literature's mission is to make the fulfillment of our essential duties more bearable.
• Truth loves nothing better than simplicity of Truth: that is the lesson Colombe Josse ought to have learned from her medieval readings, but all she seems to have gleaned from her studies is how to make a conceptual fuss in the service of nothing. The fact that the middle classes are working themselves to the bone, using their sweat and taxes to finance such pointless and pretentious research leaves me speechless. Every gray morning, day and after gloomy day, secretaries, craftsmen employees , petty civil servants , taxi drivers and concierges shoulder their burden so that the flower of French youth, duly housed and subsidized, can squander the fruit of all that dreariness upon the altar of ridiculous endeavours.

Here is what I bought "The Night of the Generals" for :

• "There's a sort of brotherhood which isn't dependent on the accident of blood relationship and has nothing in common with the herd instinct. I drink to the brotherhood of reasonable men"
• "To train a man in blind obedience is tantamount to fostering stupidity. It has nothing to do with leadership. An attempt to inculcate culture and knowledge, on the other hand, presupposes culture and knowledge on the part of the teacher. Building up an army must be a mental process. If you are training a soldier to preserve peace you must train him to be a human being"
• "A general knows that in war-time he must be prepared to take this hardest of decisions unflinchingly. That being so, he has no choice but to approach his task with profound humility. He must be fully aware of his special relationship to the highest price a human being can pay"

Also thought of "Letters from Iwo Jima" when reading this. Helpless to think of jawans under control of ruthless stupid men. How do these ever become generals? Are we a stupid race overall to allow the worst of men to be our leaders? Why is stupidity and cruelty so pervasive?
Salivating over BAC and C. Why didn't I buy LYO after reading the round table ?! Lost a good opportunity. Another decent one seems KAMN. Went to jazzercise today.