Elizabeth Bennet transitions from independence and pride to understanding.
This unforgettable literary character from Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice has captivated audiences for generations with her wit, courage, and depth of understanding.
Each quote is a testament to her vivid characterization and profound insights into society, love, and individuality.
Pride and Prejudice Quotes With Page Numbers
Elizabeth Bennet Quotes With Page Numbers
“They are all silly and ignorant like other girls; but Lizzy has something more of quickness than her sisters.”
~Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice, Characters: Mr. Darcy about Elizabeth Bennet, Chapter 1, Page 7
“She is tolerable, but not handsome enough to tempt me, and I am in no humor at present to give consequence to young ladies who are slighted by other men.”
~Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice, Characters: Mr. Darcy about Elizabeth Bennet, Chapter 3, Page 13
“But I can assure you,” she added, “that Lizzy does not lose much by not suiting his fancy; for he is a most disagreeable, horrid man, not at all worth pleasing. So high and so conceited that there was no enduring him! He walked here, and he walked there, fancying himself so very great! Not handsome enough to dance with! I wish you had been there, my dear, to have given him one of your set-downs. I quite detest the man.”
~Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice, Characters: Mrs. Bennet about Elizabeth Bennet, Chapter 3, Page 15
“I could easily forgive his pride, if he had not mortified mine.”
~Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice, Character: Elizabeth Bennet, Chapter 5, Page 21
“No, indeed, I do not wish to avoid the walk. The distance is nothing when one has a motive; only three miles. I shall be back by dinner.”
~Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice, Character: Elizabeth Bennet, Chapter 7, Pages 32, 33
“It is amazing to me,” said Bingley, “How young ladies can have patience to be so very accomplished as they all are.”
“All young ladies accomplished? My dear Charles, what do you mean?”
“Yes, all of them, I think. They all paint tables, cover screens and net purses. I scarcely know any one who cannot do all this, and I am sure I never heard a young lady spoken of for the first time without being informed that she was very accomplished.”
“Your list of the common extent of accomplishments,” said Darcy, “has too much truth. The word is applied to many a woman who deserves it no otherwise than by netting a purse or covering a screen. But I am very far from agreeing with you in your estimation of ladies in general. I cannot boast of knowing more than half a dozen, in the whole range of my acquaintance, that are really accomplished.”
“Nor I, I am sure.” said Miss Bingley.
“Then,” observed Elizabeth, “you must comprehend a great deal in your idea of an accomplished woman.”
“Yes, I do comprehend a great deal in it.”
“Oh! certainly,” cried his faithful assistant, “no one can really be esteemed accomplished who does not greatly surpass knowledge of music, singing, drawing, dancing, and the modern languages, to deserve the word; and besides all this, she must possess a certain something in her air and manner of walking, the tone of her voice, her address and expressions, or the word will be but half deserved.”
“All this she must possess,” added Darcy, “and to all this she must yet add something more substantial, in the improvement of her mind by extensive reading.”
“I am no longer surprised at your knowing only six accomplished women. I rather wonder at your knowing any.”
~Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice, Characters: Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy, Chapter 8, Page 38
“I dearly love a laugh… I hope I never ridicule what is wise or good. Follies and nonsense, whims and inconsistencies do divert me, I own, and I laugh at them whenever I can.”
~Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice, Character: Elizabeth Bennet, Chapter 11, Page 56
“Your defect is to hate everybody.” “And yours,” he replied with a smile, “is willfully to misunderstand them.”
~Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice, Characters: Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth Bennet, Chapter 11, Page 57
“I remember hearing you once say, Mr. Darcy, that you hardly ever forgave, that your resentment once created was unappeasable. You are very cautious, I suppose, as to its being created.”
“I am,” said he, with a firm voice.
“And never allow yourself to be blinded by prejudice?”
“I hope not.”
~Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice, Characters: Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth Bennet, Chapter 18, Page 92
“Do not consider me now as an elegant female intending to plague you, but as a rational creature speaking the truth from her heart.”
~Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice, Character: Elizabeth Bennet, Chapter 19, Page 106
“There are few people whom I really love, and still fewer of whom I think well. The more I see of the world, the more am I dissatisfied with it; and every day confirms my belief of the inconsistency of all human characters, and of the little dependence that can be placed on the appearance of merit or sense.”
~Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice, Character: Elizabeth Bennet, Chapter 24, Page 133
“Could there be finer symptoms? Is not general incivility the very essence of love?”
~Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice, Character: Elizabeth Bennet, Chapter 25, Page 139
“What are young men to rocks and mountains?”
~Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice, Character: Elizabeth Bennet, Chapter 27, Page 152
“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, Character: Elizabeth Bennet, Chapter 31, Page 170
“You are mistaken, Mr. Darcy, if you suppose that the mode of your declaration affected me in any other way, than as it spared the concern which I might have felt in refusing you, had you behaved in a more gentlemanlike manner.”
~Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice, Characters: Elizabeth Bennet to Mr. Darcy, Chapter 34, Page 188
“From the very beginning—from the first moment, I may almost say—of my acquaintance with you, your manners, impressing me with the fullest belief of your arrogance, your conceit, and your selfish distain of the feelings of others, were such as to form the groundwork of the disapprobation on which succeeding events have built so immovable a dislike; and I had not known you a month before I felt that you were the last man in the world on whom I could ever be prevailed on to marry.”
~Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice, Characters: Elizabeth Bennet to Mr. Darcy, Chapter 34, Page 188
“How despicably I have acted!” she cried; “I, who have prided myself on my discernment! I, who have valued myself on my abilities! who have often disdained the generous candour of my sister, and gratified my vanity in useless or blameable mistrust! How humiliating is this discovery! Yet, how just a humiliation! Had I been in love, I could not have been more wretchedly blind. But vanity, not love, has been my folly. Pleased with the preference of one, and offended by the neglect of the other, on the very beginning of our aquaintance, I have courted prepossession and ignorance, and driven reason away, where either were concerned. Till this moment I never knew myself.”
~Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice, Character: Elizabeth Bennet, Chapter 36, Page 202
“…vanity, not love, has been my folly.”
~Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice, Character: Elizabeth Bennet, Chapter 36, Page 202
“Till this moment I never knew myself.”
~Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice, Character: Elizabeth Bennet, Chapter 36, Page 202
“One cannot always be laughing at a man without now and then stumbling on something witty.”
~Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice, Character: Elizabeth Bennet, Chapter 40, Page 218
“They parted at last with mutual civility, and possibly a mutual desire of never meeting again.”
~Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice, Characters: The Narrator about Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth, Chapter 41, Page 226
“Her nose wants character; there is nothing marked in its lines. Her teeth are tolerable, but not out of the common way; and as for her eyes, which have sometimes been called so fine, I never could perceive any thing extraordinary in them.”
~Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice, Characters: Miss Bingley about Elizabeth Bennet, Chapter 45, Page 258
“She was humbled, she was grieved; she repented, though she hardly knew of what. She became jealous of his esteem, when she could no longer hope to be benefited by it. She wanted to hear of him, when there seemed the least chance of gaining intelligence. She was convinced that she could have been happy with him, when it was no longer likely they should meet.”
~Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice, Characters: The Narrator about Elizabeth Bennet, Chapter 50, Page 295
“She began now to comprehend that he was exactly the man who, in disposition and talents, would most suit her. His understanding and temper, though unlike her own, would have answered all her wishes. It was an union that must have been to the advantage of both: by her ease and liveliness, his mind might have been softened, his manners improved; and from his judgement, information, and knowledge of the world, she must have received benefit of greater importance.”
~Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice, Characters: The Narrator about Elizabeth Bennet, Chapter 50, Page 295
“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.”
~Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice, Character: Elizabeth Bennet, Chapter 56, Page 338
“I am excessively diverted. But it is so strange!”
~Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice, Character: Elizabeth Bennet, Chapter 57, Page 344
“You must learn some of my philosophy. Think only of the past as its remembrance gives you pleasure.”
~Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice, Character: Elizabeth Bennet, Chapter 58, Page 348
“Your surprise could not be greater than mine in being noticed by you. My conscience told me that I deserved no extraordinary politeness, and I confess that I did not expect to receive more than my due.”
“My object then,” replied Darcy, “was to show you, by every civility in my power, that I was not so mean as to resent the past; and I hoped to obtain your forgiveness, to lessen your ill opinion, by letting you see that your reproofs had been attended to. How soon any other wishes introduced themselves I can hardly tell, but I believe in about half an hour after I had seen you.”
~Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice, Characters: Mr. Darcy to Elizabeth Bennet, Chapter 58, Pages 349-50
“I am the happiest creature in the world. Perhaps other people have said so before, but not one with such justice. I am happier even than Jane; she only smiles, I laugh. Mr. Darcy sends you all the love in the world that he can spare from me.
~Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice, Characters: Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth Bennet, Chapter 60, Page 361
What was Elizabeth Bennet’s famous quote?
“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, Elizabeth Bennet, Chapter 31, Page 170
Elizabeth Bennet Description
Elizabeth Bennet, a central character in Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice,” is presented as intelligent, quick-witted, and independent.
Considered as having “something more of quickness than her sisters,” as per Mr. Darcy on page 7, Lizzy, as she is fondly known, has an astute outlook and an ability to recognize the follies and inconsistencies of others, as she professes her love for a good laugh on page 56.
She possesses a strong sense of self-worth and often rebels against the societal norms of her day. Her statement on page 21 shows her pride being mortified, and on pages 32 and 33, she is willing to embark on a three-mile walk solo.
Her conversations with Mr. Darcy, particularly on page 38, reflect how she values comprehensive learning, individuality, and wit, setting a high bar for what constitutes an “accomplished woman.”
Often, she locks horns with Mr. Darcy, presenting a spirited resistance to his prejudice and pride.
She is unafraid to challenge him, giving their discourse a strong undercurrent of intellectual and emotional intensity, as seen on page 57 and page 92.
Lizzy’s character blends vivacity with intellectuality, fostering an engaging narrative while challenging conformist perceptions of femininity.
What does Elizabeth say to Darcy?
“From the very beginning—from the first moment, I may almost say—of my acquaintance with you, your manners, impressing me with the fullest belief of your arrogance, your conceit, and your selfish distain of the feelings of others, were such as to form the groundwork of the disapprobation on which succeeding events have built so immovable a dislike; and I had not known you a month before I felt that you were the last man in the world on whom I could ever be prevailed on to marry.”
~Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice, Character: Elizabeth Bennet to Mr. Darcy, Page 188
Quotes about Elizabeth Bennet’s appearance
“Her nose wants character; there is nothing marked in its lines. Her teeth are tolerable, but not out of the common way; and as for her eyes, which have sometimes been called so fine, I never could perceive any thing extraordinary in them.”
~Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice, Miss Bingley about Elizabeth Bennet, Chapter 45, Page 258
What is Elizabeth Bennet’s flaw?
Elizabeth Bennet’s primary flaw is her pride in her keen perceptive abilities, which leads to a prejudiced judgment that almost hampers her potential happiness with Mr. Darcy.
She tends to form opinions rapidly and firmly, often without enough evidence.
This is evident when she develops an unfavorable view of Darcy based on an overheard criticism and further anecdotes from a dubious source, Mr. Wickham.
This quick-to-judge nature, intertwined with her self-assurance about her judgment skills, is her main limitation.