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About this quote

What does it mean?
People often cannot understand the happiness of those with different lives.
In plain terms
You can't understand others' joys if your lives differ.
What can you take from it?
Recognize limits in understanding others.

Where it applies

  • cross-cultural interaction
  • conflict resolution
  • friendship

Putting it to work

  • Ask about others' joys
  • Accept limits of understanding

Questions to consider

  • Can you truly understand others?
  • Where do you misjudge?

Another view

It assumes empathy is impossible across differences.

More from Jane Austen

  1. But there certainly are not so many men of large fortune in the world as there are pretty women to deserve them.

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  2. Business, you know, may bring money, but friendship hardly ever does.

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  3. It is a lovely night, and they are much to be pitied who have not been taught to feel, in some degree, as you do; who have not, at least, been given a taste fo…

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