Austen Said:

"What have wealth or grandeur to do with happiness?"

"Grandeur has but little,"

"but wealth has much to do with it."

"Elinor, for shame!"

"money can only give happiness where there is nothing else to give it. Beyond a competence, it can afford no real satisfaction, as far as mere self is concerned."

"Perhaps,"

"we may come to the same point. YOUR competence and MY wealth are very much alike, I dare say; and without them, as the world goes now, we shall both agree that every kind of external comfort must be wanting. Your ideas are only more noble than mine. Come, what is your competence?"

"About eighteen hundred or two thousand a year; not more than THAT."

"TWO thousand a year! ONE is my wealth! I guessed how it would end."

"And yet two thousand a-year is a very moderate income,"

"A family cannot well be maintained on a smaller. I am sure I am not extravagant in my demands. A proper establishment of servants, a carriage, perhaps two, and hunters, cannot be supported on less."

"Hunters!"

"but why must you have hunters? Every body does not hunt."

"But most people do."

"I wish,"

"that somebody would give us all a large fortune apiece!"

"Oh that they would!"

"We are all unanimous in that wish, I suppose,"

"in spite of the insufficiency of wealth."

"Oh dear!"

"how happy I should be! I wonder what I should do with it!"

"You must begin your improvements on this house,"

"and your difficulties will soon vanish."

"What magnificent orders would travel from this family to London,"

"in such an event! What a happy day for booksellers, music-sellers, and print-shops! You, Miss Dashwood, would give a general commission for every new print of merit to be sent you — and as for Marianne, I know her greatness of soul, there would not be music enough in London to content her. And books! — Thomson, Cowper, Scott — she would buy them all over and over again: she would buy up every copy, I believe, to prevent their falling into unworthy hands; and she would have every book that tells her how to admire an old twisted tree. Should not you, Marianne? Forgive me, if I am very saucy. But I was willing to shew you that I had not forgot our old disputes."

"I love to be reminded of the past, Edward — whether it be melancholy or gay, I love to recall it — and you will never offend me by talking of former times. You are very right in supposing how my money would be spent — some of it, at least — my loose cash would certainly be employed in improving my collection of music and books."

"And the bulk of your fortune would be laid out in annuities on the authors or their heirs."

"No, Edward, I should have something else to do with it."

"Perhaps, then, you would bestow it as a reward on that person who wrote the ablest defence of your favourite maxim,

that

no one can ever be in love more than once in their life —

your opinion on that point is unchanged, I presume?"

"Undoubtedly. At my time of life opinions are tolerably fixed. It is not likely that I should now see or hear any thing to change them."

"Marianne is as steadfast as ever, you see,"

"she is not at all altered."

"She is only grown a little more grave than she was."

"Nay, Edward,"

"you need not reproach me. You are not very gay yourself."

"Why should you think so!"

"But gaiety never was a part of MY character."

"Nor do I think it a part of Marianne's,"

"I should hardly call her a lively girl — she is very earnest, very eager in all she does — sometimes talks a great deal and always with animation — but she is not often really merry."

"I believe you are right,"

"and yet I have always set her down as a lively girl."

"I have frequently detected myself in such kind of mistakes,"

"in a total misapprehension of character in some point or other: fancying people so much more gay or grave, or ingenious or stupid than they really are, and I can hardly tell why or in what the deception originated. Sometimes one is guided by what they say of themselves, and very frequently by what other people say of them, without giving oneself time to deliberate and judge."

"But I thought it was right, Elinor,"

"to be guided wholly by the opinion of other people. I thought our judgments were given us merely to be subservient to those of neighbours. This has always been your doctrine, I am sure."

"No, Marianne, never. My doctrine has never aimed at the subjection of the understanding. All I have ever attempted to influence has been the behaviour. You must not confound my meaning. I am guilty, I confess, of having often wished you to treat our acquaintance in general with greater attention; but when have I advised you to adopt their sentiments or to conform to their judgment in serious matters?"

"You have not been able to bring your sister over to your plan of general civility,"