"Emma" by Jane Austen

Kindle edition here.

• "a valetudinarian all his life, without activity of mind or body, he was a much older man in ways than in years; and though everywhere beloved for the friendliness of his heart and his amiable temper, his talents could not have recommended him at any time"
• "It was a melancholy change; and Emma could not but sigh over it, and wish for impossible things"
• "from his habits of gentle selfishness, and of being never able to suppose that other people could feel differently from himself"
• "a fanciful, troublesome creature!"
• ""And have you never known the pleasure and triumph of a lucky guess?— I pity you.—I thought you cleverer—for, depend upon it a lucky guess is never merely luck. There is always some talent in it."
• "He had never been an unhappy man; his own temper had secured him from that"
• "a great deal better to choose than to be chosen, to excite gratitude than to feel it"

• "And yet she was a happy woman, and a woman whom no one named without good-will. It was her own universal good-will and contented temper which worked such wonders. She loved every body, was interested in every body's happiness, quicksighted to every body's merits; thought herself a most fortunate creature"
• "The simplicity and cheerfulness of her nature, her contented and grateful spirit, were a recommendation to every body, and a mine of felicity to herself."
• "honest, old-fashioned Boarding-school, where a reasonable quantity of accomplishments were sold at a reasonable price, and where girls might be sent to be out of the way, and scramble themselves into a little education, without any danger of coming back prodigies."
• "With an alacrity beyond the common impulse of a spirit which yet was never indifferent to the credit of doing every thing well and attentively, with the real good-will of a mind delighted with its own ideas"
• "What is passable in youth is detestable in later age."
• "Mr. Knightley, in fact, was one of the few people who could see faults in Emma Woodhouse, and the only one who ever told her of them…."
• "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."
• "That is the case with us all, papa. One half of the world cannot understand the pleasures of the other."
• "It darted through her with the speed of an arrow that Mr. Knightley must marry no one but herself!"
• "A man would always wish to give a woman a better home than the one he takes her from; and he who can do it, where there is no doubt of her regard, must, I think, be the happiest of mortals."