Jane Austen Quotes

He was not an ill-disposed young man, unless to be rather cold hearted, and rather selfish, is to be ill-disposed.

I have been used to consider poetry as "the food of love" said Darcy. "Of a fine, stout, healthy love it may. Everything nourishes what is strong already. But if it be only a slight, thin sort of inclination, I am convinced that one good sonnet will starve it entirely away.

I take no leave of you, Miss Bennet: I send no compliments to your mother. You deserve no such attention. I am most seriously displeased.

There will be little rubs and disappointments everywhere, and we are all apt to expect too much; but then, if one scheme of happiness fails, human nature turns to another; if the first calculation is wrong, we make a second better: we find comfort somewhere.

Give a girl an education and introduce her properly into the world, and ten to one but she has the means of settling well, without further expense to anybody.

Mr. Bennet, how can you abuse your own children in such a way? You take delight in vexing me. You have no compassion for my poor nerves." "You mistake me, my dear. I have a high respect for your nerves. They are my old friends. I have heard you mention them with consideration these last twenty years at least.

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife. However little known the feelings or views of such a man may be on his first entering a neighbourhood, this truth is so well fixed in the minds of the surrounding families, that he is considered as the rightful property of someone or other of their daughters.

Do not give way to useless alarm; though it is right to be prepared for the worst, there is no occasion to look on it as certain.

If this man had not twelve thousand a year, he would be a very stupid fellow.

Fine dancing, I believe like virtue, must be its own reward. Those who are standing by are usually thinking of something very different.

We must consider what Miss. Fairfax quits, before we condemn her taste for what she goes to.

Sometimes one is guided by what they say of themselves, and very frequently by what other people say of them, without giving oneself time to deliberate and judge." -Elinor Dashwood

She felt that she could so much more depend upon the sincerity of those who sometimes looked or said a careless or a hasty thing, than of those whose presence of mind never varied, whose tongue never slipped.

A woman of seven and twenty, said Marianne, after pausing a moment, can never hope to feel or inspire affection again.

You were disgusted with the women who were always speaking and looking, and thinking for your approbation alone. I roused, and interested you, because I was so unlike them.

Elinor was to be the comforter of others in her own distresses, no less than in theirs; and all the comfort that could be given by assurances of her own composure of mind, and a very earnest vindication of Edward from every charge but of imprudence, was readily offered.

I do regard her as one who is too modest for the world in general to be aware of half her accomplishments, and too highly accomplished for modesty to be natural of any other woman.

Not keep a journal! How are your absent cousins to understand the tenor of your life in Bath without one? How are the civilities and compliments of every day to be related as they ought to be, unless noted down every evening in a journal? How are your various dresses to be remembered, and the particular state of your complexion, and curl of your hair to be described in all their diversities, without having constant recourse to a journal?

Indeed, I am very sorry to be right in this instance. I would much rather have been merry than wise.

To love is to burn, to be on fire.

A Woman never looks better than on horseback

Nothing ever fatigues me, but doing what I do not like.

Marianne was silent; it was impossible for her to say what she did not feel, however trivial the occasion.

It is very unfair to judge any body's conduct, without an intimate knowledge of their situation.

To flatter and follow others, without being flattered and followed in turn, is but a state of half enjoyment.

Why not seize the pleasure at once? -- How often is happiness destroyed by preparation, foolish preparation!

I am come, young ladies, in a very moralizing strain, to observe that our pleasures of this world are always to be for, and that we often purchase them at a great disadvantage, giving readi-monied actual happiness for a draft on the future, that may not be honoured.

We are all fools in love.

I have often observed that resignation is never so perfect as when the blessing denied begins to lose somewhat of its value in our eyes.

Give a girl an education and introduce her properly into the world

We all know him to be a proud, unpleasant sort of man; but this would be nothing if you really liked him.

Everybody has their taste in noises as well as in other matters.

The post-office is a wonderful establishment! The regularity and dispatch of it! If one thinks of all that it has to do, and all that it does so well, it is really astonishing!

There are secrets in all families.

My good opinion once lost is lost forever.

Half the sum of attraction, on either side, might have been enough, for he had nothing to do, and she had hardly any body to love." (of Anne Elliot and Captain Wentworth, Persuasion)

There is something so amiable in the prejudices of a young mind, that one is sorry to see them give way to the reception of more general opinions.

Such squeamish youths as cannot bear to be connected with a little absurdity are not worth a regret.

there is not one in a hundred of either sex, who is not taken in when they marry. ... it is, of all transactions, the one in which people expect most from others, and are least honest themselves.

Run mad as often as you choose, but do not faint!

The distance is nothing when one has a motive.

How quick come the reasons for approving what we like!

You have qualities which I had not before supposed to exist in such a degree in any human creature. You have some touches of the angel in you.

But Catherine did not know her own advantages - did not know that a good-looking girl, with an affectionate heart and a very ignorant mind, cannot fail of attracting a clever young man, unless circumstances are particularly untoward.

All the privilege I claim for my own sex ... is that of loving longest, when existence or hope is gone.

I do not think it worth while to wait for enjoyment until there is some real opportunity for it.

Seldom, very seldom, does complete truth belong to any human disclosure; seldom can it happen that something is not a little disguised, or a little mistaken.

I am the happiest creature in the world. Perhaps other people have said so before, but not one with such justice. I am happier even than Jane; she only smiles, I laugh.