Famous quotes containing the words preference and/or number:
“It is impossible for us to love anything without some respect to ourselves; and we only consult our own inclination and our own pleasure when we prefer our friends to ourselves. And yet this preference is the only thing that can render friendship perfect and sincere.”
—François, Duc De La Rochefoucauld (1613–1680)
“I will not adopt that ungenerous and impolitic custom so common with novel writers, of degrading by their contemptuous censure the very performances, to the number of which they are themselves adding—joining with their greatest enemies in bestowing the harshest epithets on such works, and scarcely ever permitting them to be read by their own heroine, who, if she accidentally take up a novel, is sure to turn over its insipid leaves with disgust.”
—Jane Austen (1775–1817)