Jane Austen Quotes

One cannot have too large a party. A large party secures its own amusement.

If a woman is partial to a man, and does not endeavour to conceal it, he must find it out." -Elizabeth

She was stronger alone.

We can all begin freely—a slight preference is natural enough; but there are very few of us who have heart enough to be really in love without encouragement.

Where the wound had been given, there must the cure be found, if any where.

Portable property is happiness in a pocketbook.

Here and there, human nature may be great in times of trial, but generally speaking it is its weakness and not its strength that appears in a sick chamber; it is selfishness and impatience rather than generosity and fortitude, that one hears of. There is so little real friendship in the world! – and unfortunately' (speaking low and tremulously) 'there are so many who forget to think seriously till it is almost too late.

I wonder who first discovered the efficacy of poetry in driving away love!- Elizabeth Bennet

She knew that what Marianne and her mother conjectured one moment, they believed the next: that with them, to wish was to hope, and to hope was to expect.

A sick child is always the mother's property; her own feelings generally make it so.

Marianne Dashwood was born to an extraordinary fate. She was born to discover the falsehood of her own opinions, and to counteract, by her conduct, her most favourite maxims.

I have not a doubt of your doing very well together. Your tempers are by no means unlike. You are each of you so complying, that nothing will ever be resolved on; so easy, that every servant will cheat you; and so generous, that you will always exceed your income.

My sore throats are always worse than anyone's.

And pictures of perfection, as you know, make me sick and wicked.

A Mr. (save, perhaps, some half dozen in the nation,) always needs a note of explanation.

Arguments are too much like disputes.

I could not sit seriously down to write a serious Romance under any other motive than to save my life, & if it were indispensable for me to keep it up & never relax into laughing at myself or other people, I am sure I should be hung before I had finished the first chapter. No - I must keep my own style & go on in my own way; and though I may never succeed again in that, I am convinced that I should totally fail in any other.

Follies and nonsense, whims and inconsistencies do divert me, I own, and I laugh at them whenever I can.

I have faults enough, but they are not, I hope, of understanding. My temper I dare not vouch for. It is, I believe, too little yielding— certainly too little for the convenience of the world. I cannot forget the follies and vices of other so soon as I ought, nor their offenses against myself. My feelings are not puffed about with every attempt to move them. My temper would perhaps be called resentful. My good opinion once lost, is lost forever.

Nobody could catch cold by the sea; nobody wanted appetite by the sea; nobody wanted spirits; nobody wanted strength. Sea air was healing, softening, relaxing - fortifying and bracing - seemingly just as was wanted - sometimes one, sometimes the other. If the sea breeze failed, the seabath was the certain corrective; and where bathing disagreed, the sea air alone was evidently designed by nature for the cure.

Upon the whole, therefore, she found what had been sometimes found before, that an event to which she had looked forward with impatient desire, did not, in taking place, bring all the satisfaction she had promised herself.

We do not suffer by accident.

I declare after all there is no enjoyment like reading! How much sooner one tires of any thing than of a book! -- When I have a house of my own, I shall be miserable if I have not an excellent library.

How hard it is in some cases to be believed!' 'And how impossible in others!

Women are the only correspondents to be depended on.

Emma Woodhouse, handsome, clever, and rich, with a comfortable home and happy disposition, seemed to unite some of the best blessings of existence; and had lived nearly twenty-one years in the world with very little to distress or vex her.

At my time of life opinions are tolerably fixed. It is not likely that I should now see or hear anything to change them.

We have all a better guide in ourselves, if we would attend to it, than any other person can be.

The stream is as good as at first; the little rubbish it collects in the turnings is easily moved away.

You deserve a longer letter than this; but it is my unhappy fate seldom to treat people so well as they deserve.

And to all this she must yet add something more substantial, in the improvement of her mind by extensive reading.

But to appear happy when I am so miserable — Oh! who can require it?

He is a gentleman; I am a gentleman's daughter; so far we are equal.

I cannot speak well enough to be unintelligible.

it is better to know as little as possible of the defects of the person with whom you are to pass your life.

people always live for ever when there is an annuity to be paid them

but for my own part, if a book is well written, I always find it too short.

You have no ambition, I well know. Your wishes are all moderate.' 'As moderate as those of the rest of the world, I believe. I wish as well as every body else to be perfectly happy, but like every body else it must be in my own way. Greatness will not make me so.

We must not be so ready to fancy ourselves intentionally injured. We must not expect a lively young man to be always so guarded and circumspect. It is very often nothing but our own vanity that deceives us. Women fancy admiration means more than it does.

No: the years which had destroyed her youth and bloom had only given him a more glowing, manly, open look, in no respect lessening his personal advantages. She had seen the same Frederick Wentworth.

Where love is there is no labor; and if there be labor, that labor is loved.

And have you never known the pleasure and triumph of a lucky guess? I pity you. I thought you cleverer; for depend upon it, a lucky guess is never merely luck. There is always some talent in it.

Now I must give one smirk and then we may be rational again

Where any one body of educated men, of whatever denomination, are condemned indiscriminately, there must be a deficiency of information, or...of something else.

I have never yet known what it was to separate esteem from love

The post office has a great charm at one point of our lives. When you have lived to my age, you will begin to think letters are never worth going through the rain for.

They walked on, without knowing in what direction. There was too much to be thought, and felt, and said, for attention to any other objects.

I am not at all in a humour for writing; I must write on till I am.