“My good opinion once lost, is lost forever”

“My good opinion once lost, is lost forever” is Fitzwilliam Darcy’s concise declaration of a temperament governed by memory, judgment, and resistance to emotional persuasion. Spoken during a light conversation with Elizabeth Bennet, it turns a discussion of personal defects into a revealing statement of character: Darcy acknowledges that he is not without faults, but insists that his most dangerous weakness is a temper too little yielding to ordinary social convenience and too unwilling to forget injury.

Meaning and Immediate Context

Darcy makes the statement while resisting Elizabeth Bennet’s teasing interpretation of his character. She has suggested that his defect may be a tendency to hate everybody, and the surrounding exchange is outwardly playful even though its barbs are sharp. Darcy first rejects the idea that he has claimed perfection, admitting that he has “faults enough,” but distinguishing faults of temper from any deficiency of understanding.

His admission develops through a series of carefully qualified assertions. He cannot forget the “follies and vices” of others as quickly as he ought, nor their offenses against himself; his feelings are not easily stirred by every attempt to move them; and his temper might reasonably be called resentful. The quoted sentence is therefore not an isolated maxim but the final, absolute form of a longer self-portrait. Its parallel structure gives the judgment the force of a rule: once approval has been withdrawn, no ordinary appeal can restore it.

Character and Psychological Implication

The expression presents Darcy as unusually self-aware but not necessarily self-correcting. He recognizes that his temper is inconvenient, resentful, and resistant to social pressure, yet he describes these qualities almost as fixed properties rather than habits open to revision. The distinction matters: his honesty prevents him from disguising the defect, but his firmness risks becoming a justification for preserving it.

The line also suggests a sharply divided model of human character. Darcy’s good opinion appears capable of being lost through another person’s folly, vice, or offense, but not easily recovered through later evidence or changed conduct. In that sense, his judgment tends toward permanence. The danger is not merely that he remembers injury; it is that he allows a past judgment to become an enduring identity for the person judged.

Elizabeth Bennet’s Reply and the Passage’s Irony

Elizabeth Bennet immediately identifies the moral cost of Darcy’s confession. She calls “implacable resentment” a serious shade in a character, refusing to treat his inflexibility as an attractive eccentricity. Yet she also tells him that he has chosen his fault well because she cannot laugh at it and is safe from him. Her answer combines criticism with wit: she exposes the defect while keeping the exchange within the conventions of flirtatious verbal combat.

The irony lies in the difference between Darcy’s frankness and the implications of what he admits. He is praised, implicitly, for owning his fault without disguise, but the fault itself is precisely an inability to yield, forgive, or revise. His candor establishes ethos, while the substance of the confession undermines the security that such candor might otherwise create. The conversation’s light tone makes the admission more revealing, not less; beneath the banter, Darcy has disclosed the rule by which he governs intimacy and social judgment.

Thematic Significance

The expression crystallizes the tension between self-knowledge and change. Darcy can name his defect with remarkable precision, but recognition alone does not dissolve it. His statement gives language to a form of pride that treats judgment as durable and personal offense as permanently significant. Elizabeth Bennet’s response supplies the counterargument: a temperament that never releases resentment is not simply strong or principled, but morally diminished by its refusal to accommodate human imperfection.

As a compact piece of dialogue, the line also establishes the stakes of their relationship. Darcy’s good opinion is valuable because it is not casually granted, but that value carries a burden: losing it may mean losing access to him altogether. The sentence therefore functions both as confession and warning. It reveals a man who wants his judgments to be respected as serious, while the surrounding exchange asks whether seriousness without flexibility can become another name for pride.