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Source identified
“There is a stubbornness about me that never can bear to be frightened at the will of others. My courage always rises with every attempt to intimidate me.”

Jane Austen · Fictional character · Elizabeth Bennet

Source
Pride and Prejudice
Date
1813
Attribution
Source identified
Voice / speaker
Fictional character · Elizabeth Bennet
Meaning

What does this quote mean?

Elizabeth frames self-respect as resistance to intimidation: another person’s status or deliberate pressure does not automatically earn the power to determine how she speaks or behaves.

Source context

Where does it come from?

Pride and Prejudice, Chapter XXXI, Project Gutenberg #1342. Elizabeth Bennet says this to Mr. Darcy at Rosings while he stands near the pianoforte as she plays. Darcy immediately teases her that she sometimes enjoys professing opinions that are not entirely her own, so the line also carries Austen’s character comedy.

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Voice attribution

Who voices the line?

Fictional character · Elizabeth Bennet. Elizabeth says this to Mr. Darcy at Rosings while refusing to be intimidated by his deliberate attention as she plays the pianoforte.

The source author and the local speaker can be different, especially in fiction, drama, dialogue and poetry.

Attribution

How should this attribution be read?

This wording is connected with the named source shown above. Translations and editions can vary, so consult the source note when exact wording matters.

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Themes

Ideas connected with this quotation

Be YourselfBoundariesConfidenceCourageIdentityIndependenceRelationshipSelf RelianceSelf TrustSelf-Respect
Related quotations

Continue through nearby ideas

Source identified
“Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson · Self-Reliance · 1841

Emerson places inner integrity above conformity, arguing that a person should examine inherited standards rather than surrender judgment merely because they are socially approved.

Source note: Self-Reliance, in the passage beginning with Emerson’s argument for nonconformity.

Source identified
“That her hand may be given with dignity, she must be able to stand alone.”
Margaret Fuller · Woman in the Nineteenth Century · 1845

A relationship entered from the ability to stand independently can preserve dignity more fully than one made necessary by the inability to exist outside it.

Source note: Woman in the Nineteenth Century; Fuller connects the dignity of freely giving oneself in relationship with the prior ability to stand independently.

Source identified
“I prefer to be true to myself, even at the hazard of incurring the ridicule of others, rather than to be false, and incur my own abhorrence.”
Frederick Douglass · Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass · 1845

Douglass places self-respect above social approval: he would rather risk ridicule for stating what he genuinely believed about his own life than suppress that conviction to satisfy outside judgment.

Source note: Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, Chapter V, Project Gutenberg #23. Douglass is explaining his belief that Providence shaped his removal to Baltimore and immediately connects that belief with a continuing conviction that slavery would not hold him forever.

Source identified
“I WAS A MAN NOW.”
Frederick Douglass · My Bondage and My Freedom · 1855

The emphatic line records Douglass’s restored sense of manhood and dignity after resisting physical domination; it belongs to a specific autobiographical struggle against enslavement.

Source note: My Bondage and My Freedom, immediately after Douglass describes his resistance to Covey; capitalization follows the represented Project Gutenberg text.