Persuasion Quotes

Admiral Croft to Anne after forgetting Louisa’s name
“I wish young ladies had not such a number of fine Christian names. I should never be out if they were all Sophys, or something of that sort.”

Anne
“She now felt a great inclination to go to the outer door; she wanted to see if it rained. Why was she to suspect herself of another motive? Captain Wentworth must be out of sight. She left her seat, she would go; one half of her should not be always wiser that the other half, or always suspecting the other of being worse that it was. She would see if it rained.”

Captain Wentworth to Anne about Captain Bennet marring Louisa Musgrove
“It seems… to have been a perfectly spontaneous, untaught feeling on his side, and this surprises me. A man like him, in his situation! With a heart pierced, wounded, almost broken! Fanny Harville was a very superior creature, and his attachment to her was indeed attachment. A man does not recover from such a devotion of the heart to such a woman. He ought not – he does not.”

Captain Harville to Anne (this one is really long, but beautiful.)
“’Ah!’ Cried Captain Harville, in a tone of strong feeling, ‘if I could but make you comprehend what a man suffers when he takes a last look as his wife and children, and watches the boat that he has sent them off in, as long as it is in sight, and then turns away and says “God knows whether we ever meet again!” And then, if I could convey to you the glow of his soul when he does see them again; when, coming back after a twelvemonth’s absence, perhaps, and obliged to put into another port, he calculates how soon it be possible to get them there, pretending to deceive himself, and saying, “They cannot be here till such a day,” but all the while hoping for them twelve hours sooner, and seeing them arrive at last, as if Heaven had given them wings, by many hours sooner still! If I could explain to you all this and all that a man can bear and do, and glories to do, for the sake of these treasures of his existence!”

Elizabeth