25 Pride and Prejudice Quotes on the Impact of First Impressions

Written by Jane Austen and first published in 1813, Pride and Prejudice is easily one of the author’s greatest novels and her most popular one. 

Set in rural England in the early 19th century, the book is filled with humor and depicts manners, education, money, and marriage as they were perceived in the past.

Pride and Prejudice tells the story of witty, stubborn, and enchanting Elizabeth Bennet – the character we’ve all fallen in love with. Moreover, it centers on the conflicted relationship between Elizabeth and Fitzwilliam Darcy, a rich aristocratic landowner.

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The protagonist of the book despises Darcy at first for being arrogant and self-absorbed. Later on, she learns a few things about the repercussions of hasty judgments and what it actually means to be a genuinely good person. She finally realizes she has been prejudiced against Darcy and his wealth, and that their pride hurt them both.

With more than 20 million copies sold, Pride and Prejudice has been adapted for drama, sequels, and film. In the 2005 movie adaptation, Keira Knightley played the perfect Elizabeth Bennet.

Here are 25 Pride and Prejudice quotes on first impressions:

Vanity and pride are different things, though the words are often used synonymously. A person may be proud without being vain. Pride relates more to our opinion of ourselves, vanity to what we would have others think of us.

Nothing is more deceitful… than the appearance of humility. It is often only carelessness of opinion, and sometimes an indirect boast.

People themselves alter so much, that there is something new to be observed in them forever.

We are all fools in love.

It is very often nothing but our own vanity that deceives us.

There is a stubbornness about me that never can bear to be frightened at the will of others. My courage always rises at every attempt to intimidate me.

Do anything rather than marry without affection.

To yield without conviction is no compliment to the understanding of either.

Those who do not complain are never pitied.

You must learn some of my philosophy. Think only of the past as its remembrance gives you pleasure.

Angry people are not always wise.

It is particularly incumbent on those who never change their opinion, to be secure of judging properly at first

The distance is nothing when one has motive.

Do not give way to useless alarm… though it is right to be prepared for the worst, there is no occasion to look on it as certain.

Follies and nonsense, whims and inconsistencies, do divert me, I own, and I laugh at them whenever I can.

There is nothing so bad as parting with one's friends. One seems to forlorn without them.

Do not consider me now as an elegant female intending to plague you, but as a rational creature speaking the truth from her heart.

My affections and wishes are unchanged; but one word from you will silence me on this subject for ever.

There certainly was some great mismanagement in the education of those two young men. One has got all the goodness, and the other all the appearance of it.

The more I see of the world, the more I am dissatisfied with it; and every day confirms my belief of the inconsistencies of all human.

I am only resolved to act in that manner, which will, in my own opinion, constitute my happiness, without reference to you, or to any person so wholly unconnected with me.

I have been used to consider poetry as the food of love.

I cannot fix on the hour, or the spot, or the look or the words, which laid the foundation. It is too long ago. I was in the middle before I knew that I had begun.

where other powers of entertainment are wanting, the true philosopher will derive benefit from such as are given.

They walked on, without knowing in what direction. There was too much to be thought, and felt, and said, for attention to any other objects.