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I have been a selfish being all my life, in practice, though not in principle.

Jane Austen

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Jane Austen
Age: 101 †
Born: 1775
Born: December 16
Died: 1877
Died: July 24
Novelist
Short Story Writer
Writer
Steventon
Hampshire
Selfishness
Selfish
Principle
Principles
Practice
Though
Life

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There is nothing I would not do for those who are really my friends. I have no notion of loving people by halves, it is not my nature.
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Teach us almighty father, to consider this solemn truth, as we should do, that we may feel the importance of every day, and every hour as it passes.
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There are people, who the more you do for them, the less they will do for themselves.
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For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbors and laugh at them in our turn?
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Imust have a London audience.I could never preach, but to the educated to those who were capable of estimating my composition.
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Loss of virtue in a female is irretrievable that one false step involves her in endless ruin that her reputation is no less brittle than it is beautiful and that she cannot be too much guarded in her behaviour towards the undeserving of the other sex.
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I wish I might take this for a compliment but to be so easily seen through I am afraid is pitiful.
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Undoubtedly ... there is a meanness in all the arts which ladies sometimes condescend to employ for captivation. What bears affinity to cunning is despicable.
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His cold politeness, his ceremonious grace, were worse than anything.
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Do you not want to know who has taken it? cried his wife impatiently.
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I never wish to offend, but I am so foolishly shy, that I often seem negligent, when I am only kept back by my natural awkwardness.
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Faultless in spite of all her faults.
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A person who can write a long letter with ease, cannot write ill.
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I have no pretensions whatever to that kind of elegance which consists in tormenting a respectable man.
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It is not every man's fate to marry the woman who loves him best
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He was the proudest, most disagreeable man in the world, and every body hoped that he would never come there again.
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There are secrets in all families.
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Beware how you give your heart.
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It is this delightful habit of journalizing which largely contributes to form the easy style of writing for which ladies are so generally celebrated. Every body allows that the talent of writing is particularly female. Nature might have done something, but I am sure it must be essentially assisted by the practice of keeping a journal.
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I have had to contend against the unkindness of his sister, and the insolence of his mother and have suffered the punishment of an attachment, without enjoying its advantages.
Jane Austen