Jane Austen

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.

Life seems but a quick succession of busy nothings.

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

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

Perhaps it is our imperfections that make us so perfect for one another.

I shall be miserable if I have not an excellent library.

Happiness in marriage is entirely a matter of chance.

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

You must be the best judge of your own happiness.

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

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

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

Wisdom is better than wit, and in the long run will certainly  have the laugh on her side.

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.

Nothing ever fatigues me, but doing what I do not like.

Every savage can dance.

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

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

I wish, as well as everybody else, to be perfectly happy; but, like everybody else, it must be in my own way.

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

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

Nobody minds having what is too good for them.

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

I have been used to consider poetry as the food of love.

Without music, life would be a blank to me.

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.

Marriage is indeed a manoeuvring business.

Then I examined my own heart. And there you were. Never, I fear, to be removed.

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

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.

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

If a woman doubts as to whether she should accept a man or not, she certainly ought to refuse him.

Know your own happiness. Want for nothing but patience - or give it a more fascinating name: Call it hope.

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

I don't know what I'd do without you guys.

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

The pleasantness of an employment does not always evince its propriety.

A person who can write a long letter with ease cannot write ill.

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

Well! Evil to some is always good to others.

How quick come the reasons for approving what we like!

There is no charm equal to tenderness of heart.

The sooner every party breaks up the better.

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

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.

I cannot speak well enough to be unintelligible

My sore throats are always worse than anyone's.

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

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

How pleasant it is to spend an evening in this way! I declare, after all, there is no enjoyment like reading! How much sooner one tires of any thing than of a book!

Let other pens dwell on guilt and misery.

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

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

There is hardly any personal defect which an agreeable manner might not gradually reconcile one to.

A single woman, with a very narrow income, must be a ridiculous, disagreeable old maid! - the proper sport of boys and girls - but a single woman, of good fortune, is always respectable, and may be as sensible and pleasant as anybody else.

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?

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

Those who do not complain are never pitied

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.

Provided that nothing like useful knowledge could be gained from them, provided they were all story and no reflection, she had never any objection to books at all.

Everything nourishes what is strong already.

There is safety in reserve, but no attraction. One cannot love a reserved person.

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

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

Nobody who has not been in the interior of a family can say what the difficulties of any individual of that family may be.

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.

Where an opinion is general, it is usually correct.

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!

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

Every man is surrounded by a neighborhood of voluntary spies.

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

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

On his two younger sisters he then bestowed an equal portion of his fraternal tenderness, for he asked each of them how they did and observed that they both looked very ugly.

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.

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.

There is nothing like employment, active indispensable employment, for relieving sorrow.

My being charming, Harriet, is not quite enough to induce me to marry, I must find other people charming - one other person at least.

Everybody likes to go their own way - to choose their own time and manner of devotion.

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.

I have been a selfish being all my life, in practice though, not in principle.

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.

There is nothing like staying at home for real comfort.

What are men to rocks and mountains?

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

You ought certainly to forgive them as a Christian, but never to admit them in your sight, or allow their names to be mentioned in your hearing

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

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

I always deserve the best treatment because I never put up with any other.

A mind lively and at ease, can do with seeing nothing, and can see nothing that does not answer.

An artist cannot do anything slovenly.

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.

Indulge your imagination in every possible flight.

One cannot have too large a party.

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.

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.

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

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

Her own thoughts and reflections were habitually her best companions,

Nobody is on my side, nobody takes part with me: I am cruelly used, nobody feels for my poor nerves.

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...

The youth and cheerfulness of morning are in happy analogy and of powerful operation, and if the distress be not poignant enough to keep the eyes unclosed, they will be sure to open to sensations of softened pain and brighter hope.

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

It was not very wonderful that Catherine... should prefer cricket base ball... to books.

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

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

It is very difficult for the prosperous to be humble.

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

You have delighted us long enough.

The power of doing anything with quickness is always prized much by the possessor and often without any attention to the imperfection of the performance.

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

She felt the loss of Willoughby's character yet more heavily than she had felt the loss of his heart.

I have heard that something very shocking indeed will soon come out in London.

From politics it was an easy step to silence.

In nine cases out of ten a woman had better show more affection than she feels.

Mr. Collins was not a sensible man and the deficiency of nature had been but little assisted by education or society.

If there is anything disagreeable going on, men are always sure to get out of it

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

A man must have a very good opinion of himself when he asks people to leave their own fireside and encounter such a day as this for the sake of coming to see him. He must think himself a most agreeable fellow.

Nobody is healthy in London, nobody can be.

She was a woman of mean understanding, little information and uncertain temper.

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

It will be a bitter pill to her, that is like other bitter pills, it will have two moments ill-flavor and then be swallowed and forgotten.

Drinking too much of Mr Weston's good wine.

Everybody has their taste in noises as well as in other matters.

He was not handsome and his manners required intimacy to make them pleasing.

If you observe, people always live forever when there is an annuity to be paid them.

His own enjoyment, or his own ease, was in every particular his ruling principle.

An annuity is a very serious business.

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

She was determined as she felt it to be her duty to try to overcome all that was excessive.

An egg boiled very soft is not unwholesome.

One has no great hopes from Birmingham. I always say there is something direful in the sound.

It is only poverty that makes celibacy contemptible. A single woman of good fortune is always respectable.

It may be possible to do without dancing entirely. Instances have been known of young people passing many many months successively without being at any ball of any description and no material injury accrue either to body or mind, but when a beginning is made -- when the felicities of rapid motion have once been though slightly felt -- it must be a very heavy set that does not ask for more.

The gentleness, modesty, and sweetness of her character were warmly expatiated on, that sweetness which makes so essential a part of every woman's worth in the judgment of man that, though he sometimes loves where it is not, he can never believe it absent.

In every power of which taste is the foundation, excellence is pretty fairly divided among the sexes.

If the heroine of one novel be not patronized by the heroine of another, from whom can she expect protection and regard?

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

You give me fresh life and vigour. Adieu to disappointment and spleen. What are men to rocks and mountains? Oh! what hours of transport we shall spend! And when we do return it shall not be like other travelers without being able to give one accurate idea of any thing. We will know where we have gone.

I think it was very impertinent of him to write to you at all, and very hypocritical. I hate such false friends. Why could not he keep on quarrelling with you as his father did before him?

I am not one of those who neglect the reigning power to bow to the rising sun.

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.

How can you contrive to write so even?

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

The little bit (two inches wide) of ivory on which I work with so fine a brush, as produces little effect after much labour.

A basin of nice smooth gruel - thin, but not too thin.

They gave themselves up wholly to their sorrow, seeking increase of wretchedness in every reflection that could afford it and resolved against ever admitting consolation in future.

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.

Elinor agreed with it all, for she did not think he deserved the compliment of rational opposition.

Tacking on the kiss at the end made it too romantic, much more like a Victorian or 20th-century story, rather than the early 19th-century story that it really is.

Dress is at all times a frivolous distinction, and excessive solicitude about it often destroys its own aim.

If any young men come for Mary or Kitty send them, in for I am quite at leisure.

He [Darcy] expressed himself on the occasion as sensibly and as warmly as a man in violent love can be supposed to.

One may be continually abusive without saying any thing just, but one cannot be always laughing at a man without now and then stumbling on something witty

Single women have a dreadful propensity to being poor.

Indeed I am very sorry to be right in this instance. I would much rather have been merry than wise.

Nothing amuses me more than the easy manner with which everybody settles the abundance of those who have a great deal less than themselves.

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?

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.

One of Edward's Mistresses was Jane Shore who has had a play written about her, but it is a tragedy and therefore not worth reading.

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

If it was not for the entail I should not mind it.' `What should not you mind?' `I should not mind anything at all.' `Let us be thankful that you are preserved from a state of such insensibility.

It does not appear to me that my hand is unworthy your acceptance or that the establishment I can offer would be any other than highly desirable.

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

What Wickham had said of the living was fresh in her memory and as she recalled his very words, it was impossible not to feel that there was gross duplicity on one side or the other.

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

Mr. Wickham is blessed with such happy manners as may ensure his making friends - whether he may be equally capable of retaining them is less certain.

It is indolence... Indolence and love of ease, a want of all laudable ambition of taste for good company or of inclination to take the trouble of being agreeable which make men clergymen. A clergyman has nothing to do but be slovenly and selfish, read the newspaper watch the weather and quarrel with his wife. His curate does all the work and the business of his own life is to dine.

She had prejudices on the side of ancestry, she had a value for rank and consequence, which blinded her a little to the faults of those who possessed them.

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

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.