Разум и чувства / Sense and Sensibility

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�Nor do I think it a part of Marianne’s,’ said Elinor; �I should hardly call her a lively girl – she is very earnest, very eager in all she does – sometimes talks a great deal and always with animation – but she is not often really merry.’

�I believe you are right,’ he replied, �and yet I have always set her down as a lively girl.’

�I have frequently detected myself in such kind of mistakes,’ said Elinor, �in a total misapprehension of character in some point or other: fancying people so much more gay or grave, or ingenious or stupid than they really are, and I can hardly tell why or in what the deception originated.

�But I thought it was right, Elinor,’ said Marianne, �to be guided wholly by the opinion of other people. I thought our judgments were given us merely to be subservient to those of neighbours.

�No, Marianne, never. My doctrine has never aimed at the subjection of the understanding. All I have ever attempted to influence has been the behaviour. You must not confound my meaning. I am guilty, I confess, of having often wished you to treat our acquaintance in general with greater attention; but when have I advised you to adopt their sentiments or to conform to their judgment in serious matters?’

�You have not been able to bring your sister over to your plan of general civility,’ said Edward to Elinor, �Do you gain no ground?’

�Quite the contrary,’ replied Elinor, looking expressively at Marianne.

�My judgment,’ he returned, �is all on your side of the question; but I am afraid my practice is much more on your sister’s. I never wish to offend, but I am so foolishly shy, that I often seem negligent, when I am only kept back by my natural awkwardness. I have frequently thought that I must have been intended by nature to be fond of low company, I am so little at my ease among strangers of gentility!’

�Marianne has not shyness to excuse any inattention of hers,’ said Elinor.

�She knows her own worth too well for false shame,’ replied Edward. �Shyness is only the effect of a sense of inferiority in some way or other. If I could persuade myself that my manners were perfectly easy and graceful, I should not be shy.