"Self-knowledge is the first step to maturity...." - Quote by Jane Austen

“An annuity is a very serious business.”

“No: the years which had destroyed her youth and bloom had only given him a more glowing, manly, open look, in no respect lessening his personal advantages. She had seen the same Frederick Wentworth.”

“She had a lively, playful disposition that delighted in anything ridiculous.”

“Knowledge of the self is the mother of all knowledge. So it is incumbent on me to know my self, to know it completely, to know its minutiae, its characteristics, its subtleties, and its very atoms.”

“The powers of the mind should be concentrated and the mind turned back upon itself; as the darkest places reveal their secrets before the penetrating rays of the sun, so will the concentrated mind penetrate its own innermost secrets.”

“Through my own observations. I am convinced that an absolutely honest and direct inquiry into oneself will lead to understanding.”

“The nobler and more perfect a thing is, the later and slower it is in arriving at maturity. A man reaches the maturity of his reasoning powers and mental faculties hardly before the age of twenty-eight; a woman at eighteen.”

“There always comes a time when one must choose between contemplation and action. This is called becoming a man.”

“Ideas are like beards; men do not have them until they grow up.”