Austen Said:

Patterns of Diction in Jane Austen's Major Novels

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"I have been guessing. Shall I tell you my guess?"
"What do you mean?"
"Shall I tell you."
"Certainly."
"Well then; I guess that Mr. Willoughby hunts."
"Oh, Edward! How can you? — But the time will come I hope...I am sure you will like him."
I do not doubt it,"
He had no pleasure at Norland; he detested being in town;
He valued their kindness beyond any thing, and his greatest happiness was in being with them.
"I do assure you,"
"that I have long thought on this point, as you think now. It has been, and is, and probably will always be a heavy misfortune to me, that I have had no necessary business to engage me, no profession to give me employment, or afford me any thing like independence. But unfortunately my own nicety, and the nicety of my friends, have made me what I am, an idle, helpless being. We never could agree in our choice of a profession. I always preferred the church, as I still do. But that was not smart enough for my family. They recommended the army. That was a great deal too smart for me. The law was allowed to be genteel enough; many young men, who had chambers in the Temple, made a very good appearance in the first circles, and drove about town in very knowing gigs. But I had no inclination for the law, even in this less abstruse study of it, which my family approved. As for the navy, it had fashion on its side, but I was too old when the subject was first started to enter it — and, at length, as there was no necessity for my having any profession at all, as I might be as dashing and expensive without a red coat on my back as with one, idleness was pronounced on the whole to be most advantageous and honourable, and a young man of eighteen is not in general so earnestly bent on being busy as to resist the solicitations of his friends to do nothing. I was therefore entered at Oxford and have been properly idle ever since."
"They will be brought up,"
"to be as unlike myself as is possible. In feeling, in action, in condition, in every thing."
"I think,"
"that I may defy many months to produce any good to me."
with strong affections it was impossible, with calm ones it could have no merit.
"Hush! they will hear you."
"She is walking, I believe."
the weather was uncertain, and not likely to be good.
  • Novel: Sense And Sensibility
  • Character: Narrator as Elinor Dashwoodand Marianne Dashwood
  • Link to text in chapter 19
  • Text ID: 01099
"Why should they ask us?"
"The rent of this cottage is said to be low; but we have it on very hard terms, if we are to dine at the park whenever any one is staying either with them, or with us."
"They mean no less to be civil and kind to us now,"
"by these frequent invitations, than by those which we received from them a few weeks ago. The alteration is not in them, if their parties are grown tedious and dull. We must look for the change elsewhere."
His temper might perhaps be a little soured by finding, like many others of his sex, that through some unaccountable bias in favour of beauty, he was the husband of a very silly woman, —
this kind of blunder was too common for any sensible man to be lastingly hurt by it. — It was rather a wish of distinction,
which produced his contemptuous treatment of every body, and his general abuse of every thing before him. It was the desire of appearing superior to other people. The motive was too common to be wondered at; but the means, however they might succeed by establishing his superiority in ill-breeding, were not likely to attach any one to him except his wife.
"Certainly,"
"he seems very agreeable."
if they saw much of Mr. Willoughby at Cleveland, and whether they were intimately acquainted with him.
"Upon my word,"
"you know much more of the matter than I do, if you have any reason to expect such a match."
"My dear Mrs. Palmer!"
"You surprise me very much. Colonel Brandon tell you of it! Surely you must be mistaken. To give such intelligence to a person who could not be interested in it, even if it were true, is not what I should expect Colonel Brandon to do."
"And what did the Colonel say?"
"Mr. Brandon was very well I hope?"
"I am flattered by his commendation. He seems an excellent man; and I think him uncommonly pleasing."
"Is Mr. Willoughby much known in your part of Somersetshire?"
"You have been long acquainted with Colonel Brandon, have not you?"
"Did not Colonel Brandon know of Sir John's proposal to your mother before it was made? Had he never owned his affection to yourself?"
the sweetest girls in the world were to be met with in every part of England, under every possible variation of form, face, temper and understanding.
"Poor little creatures!"
"It might have been a very sad accident."
"Yet I hardly know how,"
"unless it had been under totally different circumstances. But this is the usual way of heightening alarm, where there is nothing to be alarmed at in reality."
"What a sweet woman Lady Middleton is!"
"And Sir John too,"
"what a charming man he is!"
he was perfectly good humoured and friendly.
"I should guess so,"
"from what I have witnessed this morning."