I declare after all there is no enjoyment like reading…

The scene takes place in Volume I, chapter 11 of Pride and Prejudice, at Netherfield, where Elizabeth Bennet is nursing her sister Jane. After tea, Mr Hurst falls asleep on a sofa and Mr Darcy takes up a book. Caroline Bingley, who hopes to marry him, does the same, having chosen the second volume of the very work he is reading. She watches his progress more than her own and keeps asking him questions, but gets only short answers.

At last, “quite exhausted by the attempt to be amused with her own book”, she yawns and delivers this praise of reading, adding that she would be miserable without an excellent library. No one replies. She yawns again, throws the book aside and looks around for some other amusement.

Pride and Prejudice was published in 1813. Austen’s irony has not stopped the line from being quoted in earnest: in 2017 it was printed on the Bank of England’s new ten-pound note bearing Austen’s portrait, and many pointed out who says it.

Pride and Prejudice, Volume I, chapter 11 (Miss Bingley), 1813

Checked word for word in the work itself.

Read the passage in the work