Sourced and curated.

Pride and Prejudice · 1813

★ 5.6

Too low they build, who build beneath the stars.

Many religions now come before us with ingratiating smirks and outspread hands, like an unctuous merchant in a bazaar. They offer consolation and solidarity and uplift, competing as they do in a marketplace. But we have a right to remember how barbarically they behaved when they were strong and were making an offer that people could not refuse.

Night Thoughts · 1745

★ 5.3

Religious literature

Death is certain, replacing both the siren-song of Paradise and the dread of Hell. Life on this earth, with all its mystery and beauty and pain, is then to be lived far more intensely: we stumble and get up, we are sad, confident, insecure, feel loneliness and joy and love. There is nothing more; but I want nothing more.

God is Not Great · 2007

★ 5.2

Essay · Religious literature

The Portable Atheist · 2007

★ 5.1

To be fond of dancing was a certain step towards falling in love.

Pride and Prejudice · 1813

★ 4.9

I could easily forgive his pride, if he had not mortified mine.

Pride and Prejudice · 1813

★ 4.0

For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbours, and laugh at them in our turn?

Pride and Prejudice · 1813

★ 4.0

I have been a selfish being all my life, in practice, though not in principle.

Pride and Prejudice · 1813

★ 4.0

The sooner every party breaks up, the better.

Emma · 1816

★ 4.0

One man’s ways may be as good as another’s, but we all like our own best.

Persuasion · 1817

★ 4.0

It is not time or opportunity that is to determine intimacy; it is disposition alone. Seven years would be insufficient to make some people acquainted with each other, and seven days are more than enough for others.

Sense and Sensibility · 1811

★ 3.9

I cannot fix on the hour, or the spot, or the look, or the words, which laid the foundation. It is too long ago. I was in the middle before I knew that I had begun.

Pride and Prejudice · 1813

★ 3.9

Without thinking highly either of men or of matrimony, marriage had always been her object; it was the only honourable provision for well-educated young women of small fortune, and, however uncertain of giving happiness, must be their pleasantest preservative from want.

Joy to the world! the lord is come; Let earth receive her King. Let ev'ry heart prepare Him room, And heav'n and nature sing.

Pride and Prejudice · 1813

★ 3.9

Hymn · Song

Joy to the World · 1719

★ 3.6

Procrastination is the thief of time.

Night Thoughts · 1742

★ 3.6

A God all mercy, is a God unjust.

Night Thoughts · 1743

★ 3.6

I expect that Woman will be the last thing civilized by Man.

George Meredith

1859

★ 3.6

What a woman thinks of women is the test of her nature.

George Meredith

1885

★ 3.6

What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence.

When I survey the wondrous cross On which the prince of glory died, My richest gain I count but loss, And pour contempt on all my pride.

God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything · 2007

★ 3.6

Hymn · Song

Time, like an ever-rolling stream, Bears all its sons away; They fly forgotten, as a dream Dies at the opening day.

When I Survey the Wondrous Cross · 1707

★ 3.5

Hymn · Song

Our God, Our Help in Ages Past · 1719

★ 3.5

Death! great proprietor of all! 'tis thine To tread out empire, and to quench the stars.

You never reach the promised land. You can march towards it.

Night Thoughts · 1742

★ 3.5

Interview

James Callaghan

1976

★ 3.5

At thirty, Man suspects himself a fool; Knows it at forty, and reforms his plan; At fifty chides his infamous delay, Pushes his prudent purpose to resolve; In all the magnanimity of thought Resolves; and re-resolves; then dies the same.

Night Thoughts · 1742

★ 3.5

Patriotism is a lively sense of collective responsibility. Nationalism is a silly cock crowing on its own dunghill.

Richard Aldington

The Colonel's Daughter · 1931

★ 3.5

Happiness in marriage is entirely a matter of chance.

Pride and Prejudice · 1813

★ 2.4

What are men to rocks and mountains?

Pride and Prejudice · 1813

★ 2.4

Think only of the past as its remembrance gives you pleasure.

Pride and Prejudice · 1813

★ 2.4

A lady's imagination is very rapid; it jumps from admiration to love, from love to matrimony, in a moment.

Pride and Prejudice · 1813

★ 2.3

There is no enjoyment like reading! How much sooner one tires of any thing than of a book!

Pride and Prejudice · 1813

★ 2.3

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

Mansfield Park · 1814

★ 2.3

Vanity and pride are different things, though the words are often used synonymously. A person may be proud without being vain. Pride relates more to our opinion of ourselves, vanity to what we would have others think of us.

Pride and Prejudice · 1813

★ 2.2

A large income is the best recipe for happiness I ever heard of. It certainly may secure all the myrtle and turkey part of it.

Mansfield Park · 1814

★ 2.2

Surprizes are foolish things. The pleasure is not enhanced, and the inconvenience is often considerable.

I do not want people to be very agreeable, as it saves me the trouble of liking them a great deal.

Emma · 1816

★ 2.2

Letter

1798

★ 2.1

The folly of people's not staying comfortably at home when they can!... Five dull hours in another man's house, with nothing to say or to hear that was not said and heard yesterday, and may not be said and heard again to-morrow... Four horses and four servants taken out for nothing but to convey five idle, shivering creatures into colder rooms and worse company than they might have had at home.

Emma · 1816

★ 2.1

For Satan finds some mischief still For idle hands to do.

Against Idleness and Mischief · 1715

★ 1.9

Be wise with speed; A fool at forty is a fool indeed.

1726

★ 1.9

Be wise to-day; 'tis madness to defer.

Night Thoughts · 1742

★ 1.9

Tir'd Nature's sweet restorer, balmy Sleep!

Night Thoughts · 1742

★ 1.9

Man wants but little; nor that little, long.

The secular State is the guarantee of religious pluralism. This apparent paradox, again, is the simplest and most elegant of political truths.

Night Thoughts · 1743

★ 1.9

Essay · Academic journal

Shall I wasting in despair Die because a woman's fair? Or make pale my cheeks with care 'Cause another's rosy are? Be she fairer than the day, Or the flow'ry meads in May, If she be not so to me, What care I how fair she be?

1998

★ 1.9

George Wither

Fair Virtue · 1622

★ 1.8

Speech · Political speech

The policy is obliteration, openly acknowledged. This is not a justifiable act of war.

George Bell

1944

★ 1.8

Beware the irrational, however seductive. Shun the "transcendent" and all who invite you to subordinate or annihilate yourself. Distrust compassion; prefer dignity for yourself and others. Don't be afraid to be thought arrogant or selfish. Picture all experts as if they were mamals. Never be a spectator of unfairness or stupidity. Seek out argument and disputation for their own sake; the grave will supply plenty of time for silence. Suspect your own motives, and all excuses. Do not live for others any more than you would expect others to live for you.

There are times, perhaps once every thirty years, when there is a sea-change in politics. It then does not matter what you say or what you do. There is a shift in what the public wants and what it approves of. I suspect there is now such a sea-change-and it is for Mrs. Thatcher.

2001

★ 1.8

James Callaghan

1979

★ 1.7

One half of the world cannot understand the pleasures of the other.

Emma · 1816

★ 1.4

Why not seize the pleasure at once?-How often is happiness destroyed by preparation, foolish preparation!

If a book is well written, I always find it too short.

Emma · 1815

★ 1.3

Short story

1817

★ 1.3

Shakespeare one gets acquainted with without knowing how. It is a part of an Englishman's constitution. His thoughts and beauties are so spread abroad that one touches them everywhere, one is intimate with him by instinct.