"Which of all my important nothings shall..." - Quote by Jane Austen
Which of all my important nothings shall I tell you first?
More by Jane Austen
“It will, I believe, be everywhere found, that as the clergy are, or are not what they ought to be, so are the rest of the nation.”
“it is better to know as little as possible of the defects of the person with whom you are to pass your life.”
“I have never yet known what it was to separate esteem from love”
More on Conversation
“And surely one of the best rules in conversation is, never to say a thing which any of the company can reasonably wish had been left unsaid.”
“Learned conversation is either the affectation of the ignorant or the profession of the mentally unemployed.”
“When two minds of a high order, interested in kindred subjects, come together, their conversation is chiefly remarkable for the summariness of its allusions and the rapidity of its transitions. Before one of them is half through a sentence the other knows his meaning and replies. ... His mental lungs breathe more deeply, in an atmosphere more broad and vast.”
More on Triviality
“Have you not budged an inch, then? Such is the daily news. Its facts appear to float in the atmosphere.... We should wash ourselves clean of such news. Of what consequence, though our planet explode, if there is no character involved in the explosion? In health we have not the least curiosity about such events. We do not live for idle amusement. I would not run round a corner to see the world blow up.”
“The sensitivity of men to small matters, and their indifference to great ones, indicates a strange inversion.”
“We should treat all the trivial things of life seriously, and all the serious things of life with sincere and studied triviality.”