Mr. Darcy Quotes

"I can readily believe," answered he gravely, "that reports may vary greatly with respect to me; and I could wish, Miss Bennet, that you were not to sketch my character at the present moment, as there is reason to fear that the performance would reflect no credit on either."
"But if I do not take your likeness now, I may never have another opportunity."

– Jane Austen

Pride and Prejudice, Chapter 18. Darcy knows that there are varying reports circulating about him and he is not being shown in the best light at the moment. Using a metaphor, he asks Elizabeth not to sketch his character right now as it may be an inaccurate sketch and reflect poorly on them both. Elizabeth has been hinting to Darcy that she heard reports of his alleged cruel treatment of George Wickham.

In vain did Elizabeth endeavour to check the rapidity of her mother’s words, or persuade her to describe her felicity in a less audible whisper; for, to her inexpressible vexation, she could perceive that the chief of it was overheard by Mr. Darcy, who sat opposite to them. Her mother only scolded her for being nonsensical.

– Jane Austen

Pride and Prejudice, Chapter 18. Elizabeth tries to stop the irrepressible Mrs. Bennet from speaking out loud about an imminent marriage between Jane and Mr. Bingley. But she cannot shut her up, and to Elizabeth’s mortification Mr. Darcy overhears all.

That his two sisters and Mr. Darcy, however, should have such an opportunity of ridiculing her relations, was bad enough, and she could not determine whether the silent contempt of the gentleman, or the insolent smiles of the ladies, were more intolerable.

– Jane Austen

Pride and Prejudice, Chapter 18. Elizabeth is embarrassed by the behavior of her family at the Netherfield ball. She is even more mortified that it has given Mr. Darcy and the Bingley sisters Caroline and Louisa so much ammunition to ridicule her family.

She could not think without anger, hardly without contempt, on that easiness of temper, that want of proper resolution which now made him the slave of his designing friends, and led him to sacrifice his own happiness to the caprice of their inclinations.

– Jane Austen

Pride and Prejudice, Chapter 24. Elizabeth is contemptuous of Charles Bingley’s weakness of character, which allowed his sisters and friend Mr. Darcy to determine his affections. She is referring to his breakup with her sister Jane. Elizabeth’s complaint that Bingley can’t direct his own feelings is ironic, since her affections and feelings are being directed by George Wickham and his lies.

We do not suffer by accident. It does not often happen that the interference of friends will persuade a young man of independent fortune to think no more of a girl whom he was violently in love with only a few days before.

– Jane Austen

Pride and Prejudice, Chapter 25. Elizabeth says this to Mrs. Gardiner about the break-up between Jane and Mr. Bingley. The "interference" she refers to is by Mr. Darcy, whom she blames for persuading his friend Bingley to pull away from Jane despite being "violently in love" with her.

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.

– Jane Austen

Pride and Prejudice, Chapter 31. Elizabeth proudly declares this to Mr. Darcy when he positions himself to have a full view of her performing on the piano at Rosings. She taunts him by saying that he means to frighten her, but she is the kind of person who will not be alarmed. Her outspoken and saucy comments draw this response from Darcy: "I shall not say that you are mistaken because you could not really believe me to entertain any design of alarming you; and I have had the pleasure of your acquaintance long enough to know that you find great enjoyment in occasionally professing opinions which in fact are not your own." Is Darcy right? Is Elizabeth who she says she is and really being herself in this exchange: spirited, courageous, self-confident? Or is her wit and outspokennness with Darcy a defense shield to protect herself and her ego against proud upper class men like him in a male-dominated society?

"Though Mrs. Collins has no instrument, she is very welcome, as I have often told her, to come to Rosings every day, and play on the pianoforte in Mrs. Jenkinson’s room. She would be in nobody’s way, you know, in that part of the house."
Mr. Darcy looked a little ashamed of his aunt’s ill-breeding, an made no answer.

– Jane Austen

Pride and Prejudice, Chapter 31. Lady Catherine, who cannot play the piano, rudely suggests that Elizabeth would not be in the way if she practised piano in the room of her daughter’s companion at Rosings. Lady Catherine uses her social position in society to assert dominance over and demean others. She lacks self-knowledge and self-awareness of her appalling manners. Even Darcy is ashamed of his aunt’s bad breeding.

"I certainly have not the talent which some people possess," said Darcy, "of conversing easily with those I have never seen before. I cannot catch their tone of conversation, or appear interested in their concerns, as I often see done."
"My fingers," said Elizabeth, "do not move over this instrument in the masterly manner which I see so many women’s do. They have not the same force or rapidity, and do not produce the same expression. But then I have always supposed it to be my own fault – because I would not take the trouble of practising."

– Jane Austen

Pride and Prejudice, Chapter 31. We learn from Darcy that he is shy and is not comfortable with having to converse with strangers. But Elizabeth is having none of his excuses. She suggests that his manners are bad and he is a poor conversationalist, because he doesn’t take the time to improve his conversational skills. She compares it to her piano playing, saying her performance is poor because she doesn’t practice enough.

We neither of us perform to strangers.

– Jane Austen

Pride and Prejudice, Chapter 31. Darcy smiles as he says this to Elizabeth in defense of his social awkwardness. It is an ambiguous line that has been the subject of much debate as to how it should be interpreted. It comes after Elizabeth has been teasing Darcy for being rude and refusing to dance with anyone outside his own party at the ball at Meryton. Darcy ends the conversational sparring with a kind word diffusing the situation. The line suggests an intimacy between them and a moment of connection, with Darcy using the word "we" and essentially saying that he and Elizabeth are the same. This is the full quote of what Darcy says: "You are perfectly right. You have employed your time much better. No one admitted to the privilege of hearing you can think anything wanting. We neither of us perform to strangers."

"Mr. Collins appears to be very fortunate in his choice of a wife."
"Yes, indeed, his friends may well rejoice in his having met with one of the very few sensible women who would have accepted him, or have made him happy if they had. My friend has an excellent understanding – though I am not certain that I consider her marrying Mr. Collins as the wisest thing she ever did. She seems perfectly happy, however, and in a prudential light it is certainly a very good match for her."

– Jane Austen

Pride and Prejudice, Chapter 31. Mr. Darcy believes that Mr. Collins is very lucky in his choice of a wife in Charlotte. However, Elizabeth is not so sure that her friend got the better end of the bargain. Charlotte is one of the few sensible women that would have married Mr. Collins, Elizabeth says. But she concedes that Charlotte appears happy and from the practical point of view it is a good match for her. Elizabeth is also being contradictory, describing Charlotte as sensible, but saying that her choosing Mr. Collins is not the wisest thing she ever did.

"It must be very agreeable for her to be settled within so easy a distance of her own family and friends."
"An easy distance, do you call it? It is nearly fifty miles."
"And what is fifty miles of good road? Little more than half a day’s journey. Yes, I call it a very easy distance."
"I should never have considered the distance as one of the advantages of the match," cried Elizabeth. "I should never have said Mrs. Collins was settled near her family."
"It is a proof of your own attachment to Hertfordshire. Anything beyond the very neighbourhood of Longbourn, I suppose, would appear far."

– Jane Austen

Pride and Prejudice, Chapter 32. Darcy and Elizabeth disagree about whether the fifty miles between Charlotte’s’s family in Meryton and her new home in Hunsford parsonage is an "easy distance." The well-traveled Darcy thinks it is. But the more sheltered Elizabeth does not. This speaks to the class difference between them, those with wealth having greater access to transport and carriages than those without it. The "bewitched" Darcy (remember this from Chapter 10) may also be testing Elizabeth to see if she is open to the idea of moving away from her family in Longbourn to settle with him in Pemberley!

But why Mr. Darcy came so often to the Parsonage, it was more difficult to understand. It could not be for society, as he frequently sat there ten minutes together without opening his lips; and when he did speak, it seemed the effect of necessity rather than of choice – a sacrifice to propriety, not a pleasure to himself. He seldom appeared really animated. Mrs. Collins knew not what to make of him. Colonel Fitzwilliam’s occasionally laughing at his stupidity, proved that he was generally different, which her own knowledge of him could not have told her; and as she would liked to have believed this change the effect of love, and the object of that love her friend Eliza.

– Jane Austen

Pride and Prejudice, Chapter 32. Elizabeth is staying with her friend Charlotte and Charlotte is puzzled as to why Mr. Darcy and his cousin Colonel Fitzwilliam visit them so often at the parsonage. Darcy is not giving much away as he often just sits there in dumb silence. Charlotte wants to believe that it is all because Darcy loves Elizabeth.

More than once did Elizabeth, in her ramble within the park, unexpectedly meet Mr. Darcy. She felt all the perverseness of the mischance that should bring him where no one else was brought, and, to prevent its ever happening again, took care to inform him at first that it was a favourite haunt of hers. How it could occur a second time, therefore, was very odd! Yet it did, and even a third. It seemed like wilful ill-nature, or a voluntary penance, for on these occasions it was not merely a few formal inquiries and an awkward pause and then away, but he actually thought it necessary to turn back and walk with her.

– Jane Austen

Pride and Prejudice, Chapter 33. While staying with her friend Charlotte, Elizabeth goes on walks in the countryside near Rosings and keeps running into Darcy. The two reluctant lovebirds are still tip-toeing around each other as they "unexpectedly" bump into each other in the park twice. But there may be nothing unexpected about it. Elizabeth lets Darcy know that it is her favorite place, so practically extends to him an invitation to be there.

What he told me was merely this: that he congratulated himself on having lately saved a friend from the inconveniences of a most imprudent marriage, but without mentioning names or any other particulars, and I only suspected it from believing him the kind of young man to get into a scape of that sort and from knowing them to have been together the whole of last summer.

– Jane Austen

Pride and Prejudice, Chapter 33. Colonel Fitzwilliam reveals to Elizabeth that it was Mr. Darcy who broke up the courtship of Jane by Charles Bingley because he felt it wasn’t a wise match. There were strong objections to the lady, the colonel said. This is an example of dramatic irony, as the colonel doesn’t realize that he is talking to Jane’s sister.

I do not see what right Mr. Darcy had to decide on the propriety of his friend’s inclination, or why, upon his own judgment alone, he was to determine and direct in what manner that friend was to be happy.

– Jane Austen

Pride and Prejudice, Chapter 33. Elizabeth speaks out against Mr. Darcy’s unwarranted interference in his friend Charles Bingley’s love life and future with Jane. She tells Colonel Fitzwilliam that Darcy didn’t have the right to alone decide how his friend was to be happy.

He was the cause, his pride and caprice were the cause, of all that Jane had suffered, and still continued to suffer. He had ruined for a while every hope of happiness for the most affectionate, generous heart in the world; and no one could say how lasting an evil he might have inflicted.

– Jane Austen

Pride and Prejudice, Chapter 33. Elizabeth lays the blame for the romantic breakup of Charles Bingley and her sister Jane entirely at the feet of Mr. Darcy and his pride. By intervening to stop their marriage, Darcy ruined the hope of happiness for the most loving and generous heart in the world, she believes. Elizabeth clearly loves Jane very much and is very upset that Darcy would do such a thing.

She was suddenly roused by the sound of the door-bell, and her spirits were a little fluttered by the idea of its being Colonel Fitzwilliam himself, who had once before called late in the evening, and might now come to inquire particularly after her. But this idea was soon banished, and her spirits were very differently affected, when, to her utter amazement, she saw Mr. Darcy walk into the room. In an hurried manner he immediately began an inquiry after her health, imputing his visit to a wish of hearing that she were better. She answered him with cold civility. He sat down for a few moments, and then getting up, walked about the room. Elizabeth was surprised, but said not a word. After a silence of several minutes, he came towards her in an agitated manner.

– Jane Austen

Pride and Prejudice, Chapter 34. Elizabeth is surprised by an unexpected visitor to the Hunsford parsonage, when an obviously nervous Mr. Darcy arrives to her door. After a little awkward and hurried small talk from him, which she responds to coldly but civilly, he walks around the room for a few minutes in silence. Then he walks agitatedly towards her and shocks her with what comes next – a most unexpected proposal of marriage!

"In vain have I struggled. It will not do. My feelings will not be repressed. You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you." Elizabeth’s astonishment was beyond expression. She stared, coloured, doubted, and was silent. This he considered sufficient encouragement, and the avowal of all that he felt and had long felt for her, immediately followed. He spoke well, but there were feelings besides those of the heart to be detailed, and he was not more eloquent on the subject of tenderness than of pride. His sense of her inferiority – of its being a degradation – of the family obstacles which judgment had always opposed to inclination, were dwelt on with a warmth which seemed due to the consequence he was wounding, but was very unlikely to recommend his suit.

– Jane Austen

Pride and Prejudice, Chapter 34. Mr. Darcy arrives at the Hunsford parsonage to make his first proposal of marriage to Elizabeth. While he is frank and honest and open, he goes about it in a clumsy and unromantic way. He speaks of how he has struggled to repress his feelings for Elizabeth, her inferior social rank and the family obstacles to such a union. But despite Elizabeth’s inferiority, he manages to declare his strong admiration and love for her. Elizabeth is absolutely shocked by the proposal, especially as she finds Darcy less "eloquent on the subject of tenderness than of pride." Darcy’s proposal seems to be more about himself than about the woman he says he loves and admires. One might say that his presentation leaves a lot to be desired. This is an example of situational irony, because Darcy proposes at the precise moment when Elizabeth hates him the most.

He concluded with representing to her the strength of that attachment which, in spite of all his endeavours, he had found impossible to conquer; and with expressing his hope that it would now be rewarded by her acceptance of his hand. As he said this, she could easily see that he had no doubt of a favourable answer. He spoke of apprehension and anxiety, but his countenance expressed real security.

– Jane Austen

Pride and Prejudice, Chapter 34. Well educated in other ways he may be, but poor Mr. Darcy never went to marriage proposal school. In his awkward proposal to Elizabeth, he manages to make himself sound like a trapped animal. Clumsy, arrogantly confident in assuming Elizabeth’s acceptance, he never asks or talks about her feelings.

And this is all the reply which I am to have the honour of expecting! I might, perhaps, wish to be informed why, with so little endeavour at civility, I am thus rejected. But it is of small importance.

– Jane Austen

Pride and Prejudice, Chapter 34. Darcy is flabbergasted that Elizabeth has turned down his marriage proposal. He accuses her of being uncivil and wants to know the reason for her rejection of him. His assumed that she would accept him, suggesting arrogance on his part, stemming from his pride.

Do you think that any consideration would tempt me to accept the man who has been the means of ruining, perhaps for ever, the happiness of a most beloved sister?

– Jane Austen

Pride and Prejudice, Chapter 34. The fallout from Darcy’s marriage proposal goes from bad to worse. Elizabeth accuses him of insulting her and ruining the happiness of her sister Jane. An angry Elizabeth confronts him about his interference in her sister’s relationship with Mr. Bingley. This appears to be her main reason for refusing his proposal, she could not imagine marrying the man who caused her sister’s unhappiness. Elizabeth is close to Jane whom she thinks is a beacon of goodness and she believes Darcy stood between her sister and her happiness with Bingley. Elizabeth is a woman of integrity whose loyalty to family trumps any proposal of marriage, even from a man as wealth as Darcy.

These offences might have been overlooked, had not your pride been hurt by my honest confession of the scruples that had long prevented my forming any serious design. These bitter accusations might have been suppressed, had I, with greater policy, concealed my struggles, and flattered you into the belief of my being impelled by unqualified, unalloyed inclination; by reason, by reflection, by everything. But disguise of every sort is my abhorrence. Nor am I ashamed of the feelings I related. They were natural and just. Could you expect me to rejoice in the inferiority of your connections? – to congratulate myself on the hope of relations, whose condition in life is so decidedly beneath my own?

– Jane Austen

Pride and Prejudice, Chapter 34. Darcy is speaking to Elizabeth here, thanking her for explaining fully to him his serious faults. This passage demonstrates why the novel is called Pride and Prejudice. Darcy accuses Elizabeth of injured pride over his honest admission about the scruples he had to overcome before proposing to her. He shows his own class prejudice when he speaks of the inferiority of Elizabeth’s connections and relations "whose condition in life is so decidedly beneath my own." Darcy is honest and there is no duplicity about him, he speaks his mind and informs Elizabeth that "disguise of every sort is my abhorrence."

You are mistaken, Mr. Darcy, if you suppose that the mode of your declaration affected me in any other way, than as it spared me the concern which I might have felt in refusing you, had you behaved in a more gentlemanlike manner.

– Jane Austen

Pride and Prejudice, Chapter 34. Elizabeth says this to Darcy after he accuses her of only refusing his hand in marriage because of her hurt pride over the way he proposed. Darcy may have the appearance of a gentleman, but here Elizabeth calls him out for being ungentlemanlike. This comment greatly troubles Darcy afterwards, causing him much self-reflection and to eventually re-evaluate his behavior as he grows in self-knowledge.
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