“Know your own happiness. You want nothing but patience—or give it a more fascinating name: call it hope.”
Permalink: Jane Austen
About this quote
Mr. Knightley says it to Emma when she complains that she cannot possibly enjoy herself at a ball. Austen lets the most sensible character in the book deliver the most teasing sentence, and the joke is that patience and hope turn out to be the same thing wearing different clothes.
Source: Emma