Tell Us: What’s Your Favorite Jane Austen Line?

I learned Jane Austen’s lines like a second language when I was growing up. My quip-quoting, BBC box-set owning, Austen-loving parents began immersing me in her literary world before I was old enough to comprehend all its nuances and ironic undertones. By the time I picked up Pride and Prejudice to read it myself when I was in middle school, the characters and scenes felt as familiar as memories from my own life—and I already knew my parents’ favorite lines by heart.

As I’ve grown older and read and reread Pride and Prejudice and Austen’s other novels, I’ve become attached to other lines, both satiric—like the ones my parents favor—and more sincere. Professions of love: “You pierce my soul.”  Feminist rejoinders: “A woman may not marry a man merely because she is asked, or because he is attached to her, and can write a tolerable letter.” Descriptions of beloved—and not-so-beloved—characters: “She was a woman who spent her days in sitting nicely dressed on a sofa.” Each time I read one of Austen’s books or watch one of the film adaptations, I’m struck by new moments and new lines, adding to a mental collection much too extensive for this one brief note.

But the lines my parents love are still the ones I know best, and the ones I hold closest to my heart. So when I started listing out my favorites, I reached out to both of them, prompting two enthusiastic text conversations.

My mom is an especial fan of Pride and Prejudice heroine Elizabeth Bennet’s absurd, puffed-up cousin and suitor, Mr. Collins, and Mr. Darcy’s haughty aunt, Lady Catherine de Bourgh. This, from Lady Catherine, is her “all-time favorite” Austen quote—and also one of mine:

There are few people in England, I suppose, who have more true enjoyment of music than myself, or a better natural taste. If I had ever learnt, I should have been a great proficient.

My dad, on the other hand, is a devotee of Lizzy’s wise-cracking, socially disenchanted father, Mr. Bennet. “The best stand-alone JA quote of all time,” he texted me almost immediately, is this one, spoken by Mr. Bennet to Lizzy:

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

It’s one of my very favorites, and the first one I thought of, too—because it’s a great line, but also because it always, always reminds me of my dad, and the days we’ve spent watching and discussing and laughing over Pride and Prejudice together.

Now we’d like you to join the discussion. We’ll be talking more about the best Jane Austen lines as part of our celebration of her life and legacy next week, and we’d like to hear your nominations. In this form, please share some of your favorite turns of phrase from her books (and the many adaptations they’ve inspired), and tell us a bit about what makes them your favorites.