Jane Austen Quotes: 84

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

  Northanger Abbey

• There is nothing I would not do for those who are really my friends. I have no notion of loving people by halves, it is not my nature.

  Northanger Abbey

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

  Pride and Prejudice

• 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.

  Pride and Prejudice

• In vain have I struggled. It will not do. My feelings will not be repressed. You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you.

  Pride And Prejudice

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

  Jane Austen's Letters

• The more I know of the world, the more I am convinced that I shall never see a man whom I can really love. I require so much!

  Sense and Sensibility

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

  Pride and Prejudice

• There are few people whom I really love, and still fewer of whom I think well. The more I see of the world, the more am I dissatisfied with it; and every day confirms my belief of the inconsistency of all human characters, and of the little dependence that can be placed on the appearance of merit or sense.

  Pride and Prejudice

• Angry people are not always wise.

  Pride and Prejudice

• I cannot fix on the hour, or the spot, or the look or the words, which laid the foundation. It is too long ago. I was in the middle before I knew that I had begun.

  Pride and Prejudice

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

• 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.

  Pride and Prejudice

• You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope...I have loved none but you.

  Persuasion

• I hate to hear you talk about all women as if they were fine ladies instead of rational creatures. None of us want to be in calm waters all our lives.

  Persuasion

• Selfishness must always be forgiven you know, because there is no hope of a cure.

• Ah! There is nothing like staying at home, for real comfort.

• 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.

  Pride and Prejudice

• I could easily forgive his pride, if he had not mortified mine.

  Pride and Prejudice

• The Very first moment I beheld him, my heart was irrevocably gone.

  Love and Friendship

• What are men to rocks and mountains?

  Pride and Prejudice

• I must learn to be content with being happier than I deserve.

  Pride and Prejudice

• Silly things do cease to be silly if they are done by sensible people in an impudent way.

  Emma

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

• It isn't what we say or think that defines us, but what we do.

  Sense and Sensibility

• General benevolence, but not general friendship, made a man what he ought to be.

• 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.

• 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.

  Pride and Prejudice

• It is only a novel... or, in short, only some work in which the greatest powers of the mind are displayed, in which the most thorough knowledge of human nature, the happiest delineation of its varieties, the liveliest effusions of wit and humour, are conveyed to the world in the best-chosen language

  Northanger Abbey

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

  Pride and Prejudice

• Life seems but a quick succession of busy nothings.

  Mansfield Park

• If I could but know his heart, everything would become easy.

  Sense and Sensibility

• 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.

  Emma

• There is, I believe, in every disposition a tendency to some particular evil, a natural defect, which not even the best education can overcome." "And your defect is a propensity to hate everybody." "And yours,"he replied with a smile, "is wilfully to misunderstand them.

  Pride and Prejudice

• There could have been no two hearts so open, no tastes so similar, no feelings so in unison

  Persuasion

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

• Oh, Lizzy! do anything rather than marry without affection.

  Pride and Prejudice

• Stupid men are the only ones worth knowing after all.

• 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.

  Pride and Prejudice

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

  Emma

• How quick come the reasons for approving what we like.

  Persuasion

• Had I been in love, I could not have been more wretchedly blind. But vanity, not love, has been my folly.

  Pride and Prejudice

• There is no charm equal to tenderness of heart.

• Without music, life would be a blank to me.

  Emma

• ...when pain is over, the remembrance of it often becomes a pleasure.

  Persuasion

• I come here with no expectations, only to profess, now that I am at liberty to do so, that my heart is and always will be yours.

  Sense and Sensibility

• I cannot speak well enough to be unintelligible.

  Northanger Abbey

• You must be the best judge of your own happiness.

  Emma

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

  Mansfield Park

• No man is offended by another man's admiration of the woman he loves; it is the woman only who can make it a torment.

  Northanger Abbey

• 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.

  Pride and Prejudice

• It is happy for you that you possess the talent of flattering with delicacy. May I ask whether these pleasing attentions proceed from the impulse of the moment, or are they the result of previous study?

  Pride and Prejudice

• 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 isstrong already. But if it be only a slight, thin sort of inclination, Iam convinced that one good sonnet will starve it entirely away.

  Pride and Prejudice

• She had been forced into prudence in her youth, she learned romance as she grew older: the natural sequel of an unnatural beginning.

  Persuasion

• You are mistaken, Mr. Darcy, if you suppose that the mode of your declaration affected me in any other way, than as it spared the concern which I might have felt in refusing you, had you behaved in a more gentlemanlike manner."(Elizabeth Bennett)

  Pride and Prejudice

• Dare not say that man forgets sooner than woman, that his love has an earlier death.

  Persuasion

• Yes, vanity is a weakness indeed. But pride - where there is a real superiority of mind, pride will be always under good regulation.

  Pride and Prejudice

• To wish was to hope, and to hope was to expect

  Sense and Sensibility

• A fondness for reading, properly directed, must be an education in itself.

  Mansfield Park

• [I]t is well to have as many holds upon happiness as possible.

  Northanger Abbey

• Every moment has its pleasures and its hope.

  Mansfield Park

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

  Emma

• 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.

  Northanger Abbey

• How much sooner one tires of anything than of a book!

  Pride and Prejudice

• Men have had every advantage of us in telling their own story. Education has been theirs in so much higher a degree; the pen has been in their hands. I will not allow books to prove anything.

  Persuasion

• If a book is well written, I always find it too short.

  Sense and Sensibility

• my good qualities are under your protection, and you are to exaggerate them as much as possible; and, in return, it belongs to me to find occasion for teasing and quarreling with you as often as may be...

  Pride and Prejudice

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

  Pride and Prejudice

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

• Books--oh! no. I am sure we never read the same, or not with the samefeelings." "I am sorry you think so; but if that be the case, there can at least beno want of subject. We may compare our different opinions.

  Pride and Prejudice

• There is one thing, Emma, which a man can always do if he chooses, and that is his duty; not by manoeuvring and finessing, but by vigour and resolution. - Mr. Knightley

  Emma

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

  Emma

• she thought it was the misfortune of poetry, to be seldom safely enjoyed by those who enjoyed it completely; and that the strong feelings which alone could estimate it truly, were the very feelings which ought to taste it but sparingly.

  Persuasion

• My idea of good company, Mr. Eliot, is the company of clever, well-informed people who have a great deal of conversation; that is what I call good company.

  Persuasion

• Have you any other objection than your belief of my indifference?"- Elizabeth Bennet

• 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.

  Pride and Prejudice

• ...I will not allow books to prove any thing." "But how shall we prove any thing?" "We never shall.

  Persuasion

• …told herself likewise not to hope. But it was too late. Hope had already entered…

  Sense and Sensibility

• Every impulse of feeling should be guided by reason; and, in my opinion, exertion should always be in proportion to what is required.

  Pride and Prejudice

• There certainly was some great mismanagement in the education of those two young men. One has got all the goodness, and the other all the appearance of it.

  Pride and Prejudice

• but a sanguine temper, though for ever expecting more good than occurs, does not always pay for its hopes by any proportionate depression. it soon flies over the present failure, and begins to hope again.

  Emma

• How often is happiness destroyed by preparation, foolish preparation!

  Emma

• Facts or opinions which are to pass through the hands of so many, to be misconceived by folly in one, and ignorance in another, can hardly have much truth left.

  Persuasion

• He will make you happy, Fanny; I know he will make you happy; but you will make him everything.

  Mansfield Park