Jane Austen Quotes

English novelist noted for her insightful portrayals of middle-class families (1775-1817)

"If I loved you less, I might be able to talk about it more."

"Life seems but a quick succession of busy nothings."

"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 . . ."

"A large income is the best recipe for happiness I ever heard of."

"The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid."

"Vanity and pride are different things, though the words are often used synonymously. A person may be proud without being vain. Pride relates more to our opinion of ourselves; vanity, to what we would have others think of us."

"The more I know of the world, the more I am convinced that I shall never see a man whom I can really love"

"Everything united in her; good understanding, correct opinions, knowledge of the world and a warm heart"

"You have delighted us long enough."

"What are men to rocks and mountains?"

"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 twenty years at least."

"One has not great hopes from Birmingham. I always say there is something direful in the sound."

"An engaged woman is always more agreeable than a disengaged. She is satisfied with herself. Her cares are over, and she feels that she may exert all her powers of pleasing without suspicion. All is safe with a lady engaged; no harm can be done."

"A woman, especially, if she have the misfortune of knowing anything, should conceal it as well as she can."

                                   

"To be fond of dancing was a certain step towards falling in love."

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

"Happiness in marriage is entirely a matter of chance."

"Single women have a dreadful propensity for being poor. Which is one very strong argument in favor of matrimony."

"Nothing is more deceitful than the appearance of humility. It is often only carelessness of opinion, and sometimes an indirect boast."

"Those who do not complain are never pitied."

"I cannot speak well enough to be unintelligible"

"Oh! do not attack me with your watch. A watch is always too fast or too slow. I cannot be dictated to by a watch."

"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."

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

"It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man is in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife."

"In his company, I am grieved to the soul by a thousand tender recollections."

"From politics, it was an easy step to silence."

"From this day you must be a stranger to one of your parents. - Your mother will never see you again if you do not marry Mr Collins, and I will never see you again if you do."

"Surprises are foolish things. The pleasure is not enhanced, and the inconvenience is often considerable."

"Friendship is certainly the finest balm for the pangs of disappointed love."

"One man's ways may be as good as another's, but we all like our own best."

"What dreadful hot weather we have! It keeps me in a continual state of inelegance."

"I do not want people to be agreeable, as it saves me that trouble of liking them."

"One half of the world cannot understand the pleasures of the other."

"It sometimes happens that a woman is handsomer at twenty-nine than she was ten years before"

"I do not want people to be very agreeable, as it saves me the trouble of liking them a great deal."

"To look almost pretty is an acquisition of higher delight to a girl who has been looking plain for the first fifteen years of her life than a beauty from her cradle can ever receive."

"We met Dr. Hall in such deep mourning that either his mother, his wife, or himself must be dead."

"Nobody can tell what I suffer! But it is always so. Those who do not complain are never pitied."

"It was, perhaps, one of those cases in which advice is good or bad only as the event decides."

"There are certainly are not so many men of large fortune in the world as there are of pretty woman to deserve them."

"Next to being married, a girl likes to be crossed in love a little now and then."

"We do not look in our great cities for our best morality."

"There are people, who the more you do for them, the less they will do for themselves."

"One cannot be always laughing at a man without now and then stumbling on something witty."

"Human nature is so well disposed towards those who are in interesting situations, that a young person, who either marries or dies, is sure of being kindly spoken of."

"Business, you know, may bring you money, but friendship hardly ever does."

"A lady's imagination is very rapid; it jumps from admiration to love, from love to matrimony in a moment"

"One does not love a place the less for having suffered in it, unless it has been all suffering, nothing but suffering."

"There is nothing like staying at home for real comfort."

"A woman, especially if she has the misfortune of knowing anything, should conceal it as well as she can."

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

"Where so many hours have been spent in convincing myself that I am right, is there not some reason to fear I may be wrong?"

"For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbors and laugh at them in our turn?"

"My sore throats are always worse than anyone's."

"It is always incomprehensible to a man that a woman should refuse an offer of marriage"

"Nobody minds having what is too good for them."

"Let other pens dwell on guilt and misery."

"To sit in the shade on a fine day and look upon verdure is the most perfect refreshment."

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

"Why not seize the pleasure at once, how often is happiness destroyed by preparation, foolish preparations."

"Vanity working on a weak head, produces every sort of mischief."

"Where an opinion is general, it is usually correct."

"It will, I believe, be everywhere found, that as the clergy are, or are not what they ought to be, so are the rest of the nation."

"It is always incomprehensible to a man that a woman should ever refuse an offer of marriage."

"Every man is surrounded by a neighborhood of voluntary spies."

"They are much to be pitied who have not been given a taste for nature early in life."

"What wild imaginations one forms where dear self is concerned! How sure to be mistaken!"

"With men he can be rational and unaffected, but when he has ladies to please, every feature works."