Jane Austen Quotes

Is there not something wanted, Miss Price, in our language - a something between compliments and - and love - to suit the sort of friendly acquaintance we have had together?

Know your own happiness.

I cannot help thinking that it is more natural to have flowers grow out of the head than fruit.

Let us have the luxury of silence.

Do not consider me now as an elegant female intending to plague you, but as a rational creature speaking the truth from her heart.

The truth is, that in London it is always a sickly season. Nobody is healthy in London, nobody can be.

The more I see of the world, the more am i dissatisfied with it; and everyday confirms my belief of the inconsistencies of all human.

The publicis rather apt to be unreasonably discontented when a woman does marry again, than when she does not.

From politics it was an easy step to silence.

He could not forgive her, but he could not be unfeeling. Though condemning her for the past, and considering it with high and unjust resentment, though perfectly careless of her, and though becoming attached to another, still he could not see her suffer, without the desire of giving her relief. It was a remainder of former sentiment; it was an impulse of pure, though unacknowledged friendship; it was a proof of his own warm and amiable heart.

To her own heart it was a delightful affair, to her imagination it was even a ridiculous one, but to her reason, her judgment, it was completely a puzzle.

She was happy, she knew she was happy, and knew she ought to be happy.

I am not romantic, you know; I never was.

The world may know my words, but it has no such privileges with my heart

Life could do nothing for her, beyond giving time for a better preparation for death.

How wonderful, how very wonderful the operations of time, and the changes of the human mind!

Next to being married, a girl likes to be crossed in love a little now and then. It is something to think of, and gives her a sort of distinction among her companions

I have read your book, and I disapprove.

Sir Walter Elliot, of Kellynch-hall, in Somersetshire, was a man who, for his own amusement, never took up any book but the Barontage; there he found occupation for an idle hour, and consolation in a distressed one; . . .

I encourage him to be in his garden as often as possible. Then he has to walk to Rosings nearly every day. ... I admit I encourage him in that also.

Could there be finer symptoms? Is not general incivility the very essence of love?

There are as many forms of love as there are moments in time.

A person who is knowingly bent on bad behavior, gets upset when better behavior is expected of them.

She is tolerable, but not handsome enough to tempt me, and I am in no humor at present to give consequence to young ladies who are slighted by other men.

A man does not recover from such devotion of the heart to such a woman! He ought not; he does not.

I am no indiscriminate novel reader. The mere trash of the common circulating library I hold in the highest contempt.

She tried to be calm, and leave things to take their course; and tried to dwell much on this argument of rational dependence – “Surely, if there be constant attachment on each side, our hearts must understand each other ere long. We are not boy and girl, to be captiously irritable, misled by every moment’s inadvertence, and wantonly playing with our own happiness.” And yet, a few minutes afterwards, she felt as if their being in company with each other, under their present circumstances, could only be exposing them to inadvertencies and misconstructions of the most mischievous kind.

I cannot think well of a man who sports with any woman's feelings; and there may often be a great deal more suffered than a stander-by can judge of.

You, of all people, deserve a happy ending Despite everything that happened to you, you aren't bitter You aren't cold You've just retreated a little and been shy, and that's okay If I were a fairy godmother, I would give you your heart's desire in an instant And I would wipe away your tears and tell you not to cry "A large income is the best recipe for happiness I ever heard of"

Thus much indeed he was obliged to acknowledge - that he had been constant unconsciously, nay unintentionally; that he had meant to forget her, and believed it to be done. He had imagined himself indifferent, when he had only been angry; and he had been unjust to her merits, because he had been a sufferer from them.

Here I have opportunity enough for the exercise of my talent, as the chief of my time is spent in conversation.

I am afraid that the pleasantness of an employment does not always evince its propriety.

I consider a country-dance as an emblem of marriage. Fidelity and complaisance are the principle duties of both; and those men who do not choose to dance or to marry them selves, have no business with the partners or wives of the neighbors.

She was heartily ashamed of her ignorance - a misplaced shame. Where people wish to attach, they should always be ignorant. To come with a well−informed mind is to come with an inability of administering to the vanity of others, which a sensible person would always wish to avoid. A woman especially, if she have the misfortune of knowing anything, should conceal it as well as she can.

To take a dislike to a young man, only because he appeared to be of a different disposition from himself, was unworthy the real liberality of mind

She was stronger alone; and her own good sense so well supported her, that her firmness was as unshaken, her appearance of cheerfulness as invariable, as, with regrets so poignant and so fresh, it was possible for them to be.

Did not you? I did for you. But that is one great difference between us. Compliments always take you by surprise, and me never.

I am now convinced that I have never been much in love; for had I really experienced that pure and elevating passion, I should at present detest his very name, and wish him all manner of evil. But my feelings are not only cordial towards him; they are even impartial towards her. I cannot find out that I hate her at all, or that I am in the least unwilling to think her a very good sort of girl. There can be no love in all this.

I use the verb 'to torment,' as I observed to be your own method, instead of 'to instruct,' supposing them to be now admitted as synonymous.

I believe you [men] capable of everything great and good in your married lives. I believe you equal to every important exertion, and to every domestic forbearance, so long as - if I may be allowed the expression, so long as you have an object. I mean, while the woman you love lives, and lives for you. All the privilege I claim for my own sex (it is not a very enviable one, you need not covet it) is that of loving longest, when existence or when hope is gone.

Each found her greatest safety in silence.

one day in the country is exactly like another.

You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope. Tell me not that I am too late, that such precious feelings are gone for ever. I offer myself to you again with a heart even more your own than when you almost broke it, eight and a half years ago. Dare not say that a man forgets sooner than woman, that his love has an earlier death. I have loved none but you. Unjust I may have been, weak and resentful I have been, but never inconstant.

Full many a flower is born to blush unseen, And waste its fragrance on the desert air.

If you will thank me '' he replied let it be for yourself alone. That the wish of giving happiness to you might add force to the other inducements which led me on I shall not attempt to deny. But your family owe me nothing. Much as I respect them I believe I thought only of you.

Well, my comfort is, I am sure Jane will die of a broken heart, and then he will be sorry for what he has done.

I trust that absolutes have gradations.

There is a stubbornness about me that never can bear to be frightened at the will of others. My courage always rises at every attempt to intimidate me.