Ch.17:
"What have wealth or grandeur to do with happiness?"
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"I wish," said Margaret, striking out a novel thought, "that somebody would give us all a large fortune apiece!"

"Oh that they would!" cried Marianne, her eyes sparkling with animation, and her cheeks glowing with the delight of such imaginary happiness.

Thing is, isn't her first statement right, at least according to conventional wisdom, which says that money can't buy happiness? Seems perfectly obvious to me.

Another of her pie-in-the-sky romantic notions that doesn't seem so far-fetched is back in Ch.12:

"It is not time or opportunity that is to determine intimacy: -- it is disposition alone. Seven years would be insufficient to make some people acquainted with each other, and seven days are more than enough for others. I should hold myself guilty of greater impropriety in accepting a horse from my brother than from Willoughby. Of John I know very little, though we have lived together for years; but of Willoughby my judgment has long been formed."

OK, so she appears to have been not entirely right about Willoughby. But isn't the basic principle about what it takes to know someone true? Marianne implicitly recognises that love isn't essentially about time, but is a quality that can be instantly recognised. It's a truism that you can spend years with a partner without ever really getting to know them (like Mrs Palmer), while other people seem to instictively "click" from the word go (like the John Dashwoods!!!!). After all, it worked for Tom Jones who, at nearly 70, remains married to the woman he wed when he was a year younger than Marianne is when she falls in love with Willoughby. (It also worked for Romeo and Juliet, but that's a different story....)