Pride and Prejudice

‘You mean that he appears silly.’ ‘No, no,’ said Dorothea, recollecting herself, and laying her hand on her sister’s a moment, ‘but he does not talk equally well on all subjects.’ ‘I should think none but disagreeable people do,’ said Celia, in her usual purring way. ‘They must be very dreadful to live with. Only think! at breakfast, and always.’ D

Society never made the preposterous demand that a man should think as much about his own qualifications for making a charming girl happy as he thinks of hers for making himself happy.

He was but seven-and-twenty, an age at which many men are not quite common – at which they are hopeful of achievement, resolute in avoidance, thinking that Mammon shall never put a bit in their mouths and get astride their backs, but rather that Mammon, if they have anything to do with him, shall draw their chariot.