Jane Austen Quotes

He was the proudest, most disagreeable man in the world, and every body hoped that he would never come there again.

Of this she was perfectly unaware; to her he was only the man who had made himself agreeable nowhere, and who had not thought her handsome enough to dance with.

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!

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

She told the story, however, with great spirit among her friends; for she had a lively, playful disposition, which delighted in any thing ridiculous.

There is nothing like employment, active indispensable employment, for relieving sorrow. Employment, even melancholy, may dispel melancholy.

Oh! Single, my dear, to be sure! A single man of large fortune; four or five thousand a year. What a fine thing for our girls!

She hardly knew how to suppose that she could be an object of admiration to so great a man.

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

With a book he was regardless of time.

A lady, without a family, was the very best preserver of furniture in the world.

She wished such words unsaid with all her heart

Difficult for actors to extemporise in nineteenth-century English. Except for Robert Hardy and Elizabeth Spriggs, who speak that way anyway.

Eleanor went to her room "where she was free to think and be wretched.

From a night of more sleep than she had expected, Marianne awoke the next morning to the same consciousness of misery in which she had closed her eyes.

I do not find myself making any use of the word sacrifice.

The worst crimes; are the crimes of the heart

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.

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

Grant us peace, Almighty Father, so to pray as to deserve to be heard.

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

I must have my share in the conversation.

What a shame, for I dearly love to laugh.

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

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

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.

I have read your book, and I disapprove.

To be sure you know no actual good of me, but nobody thinks of that when they fall in love.

Where shall we see a better daughter, or a kinder sister, or a truer friend?

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

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.

Never could I expect to be so truly beloved and important; so always first and always right in any man's eyes as I am in my father's.

one day in the country is exactly like another.

No- I cannot talk of books in a ballroom; my head is always full of something else.

There is a quickness of perception in some, a nicety in the discernment of character, a natural penetration, in short, which no experience in others can equal.

Perfect happiness, even in memory, is not common.

Real solemn history, I cannot be interested in.... The quarrels of popes and kings, with wars and pestilences in every page; the men all so good for nothing, and hardly any women at all.

When money is once parted with, it can never return.

I have no talent for certainty.

She attracted him more than he liked.

It would be mortifying to the feelings of many ladies, could they be made to understand how little the heart of a man is affected by what is costly or new in their attire.

She had nothing to do but to forgive herself and be happier than ever.

Dearest, loveliest Elizabeth! What do I not owe you! You taught me a lesson, hard indeed at first, but most advantageous. By you, I was properly humbled.

This sweetest and best of all creatures, faultless in spite of all her faults.

Fraternal love, sometimes almost every thing, is at others worse than nothing.

Elinor could sit still no longer. She almost ran out of the room, and as soon as the door was closed, burst into tears of joy, which at first she thought would never cease.

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

But to live in ignorance on such a point was impossible.

My Emma, does not every thing serve to prove more and more the beauty of truth and sincerity in all our dealings with each other?

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