Sense & Sensibility Quotes

“You’re stuck with yourself, so you might as well try and be someone you can stand to live with.”
― Joanna Trollope, Sense & Sensibility

“We’re so useful, we practical people. We hold it altogether. But we’re seen as killjoys, somehow. Most unfair.”
― Joanna Trollope, Sense & Sensibility

“Was it worth saying that she was no longer going to do anything for anyone since it seemed to her that the more generous she was, the more she herself seemed to get punished?”
― Joanna Trollope, Sense & Sensibility

“Marianne would love watching paint dry, if Wills was watching it with her.”
― Joanna Trollope, Sense & Sensibility

“It's better to do something rather than talk about it. Don't you think?”
― Joanna Trollope, Sense & Sensibility

“She was striving to change, she was, but it was hard, all the same, to let go of the glory of her past certainties, of her belief in passion, and surrender, and the seductive power of giving in to inclination.”
― Joanna Trollope, Sense & Sensibility

“She supposed, a little sadly, that her temperament just wasn't designed to believe that nothing mattered in the world besides romantic love. Try as she might, she just couldn't convince herself that the world was well lost for love, or that a penniless life in a garret meant bliss as long as love was a substitute for warmth or food. Sometimes over the years she had looked at Marianne and envied her ability to abandon herself almost ecstatically to music, or place, or literature or -- as so intensely in the present case -- to love. It must be extraordinary, Elinor thought, to be able to surrender oneself so completely, not just because it would feel exhilarating but also because it meant that one was -- oh, how unlike me, Elinor thought regretfully -- able to trust. Marianne could trust. She trusted her instincts; she trusted those dear to her; she trusted her emotions and her passions. She drank deep, you could see that.; she squeezed every drop of living out of all the elements that mattered to her. It made her careless sometimes, of course it did, but it was a wonderfully rich and rapt way to be.”
― Joanna Trollope, Sense & Sensibility

“She’s made up her mind about missing him, like she’s made up her mind about giving up her course. She won’t let herself despair about things she can’t have, and doesn’t waste her energies longing for things like I do. She thinks before she feels, Ma, you know she does. I expect she does sort of miss Ed, in her way.”
― Joanna Trollope, Sense & Sensibility