Jane Austen

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.

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

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

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

It isnt what we say or think that defines us but what we do.

Walter Scott has no business to write novels, especially good ones. It is not fair. He has fame and profit enough as a poet, and should not be taking the bread out of the mouths of other people.

Without music, life would be a blank to me.

There is no charm equal to tenderness of heart.

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

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

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

Where youth and diffidence are united, it requires uncommon steadiness of reason to resist the attraction of being called the most charming girl in the world.

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.

Happiness in marriage is entirely a matter of chance.

I have no notion of loving people by halves, it is not my nature.

An agreeable manner may set off handsome features but can never alter plain ones.

But I believe I must date it from my first seeing his beautiful grounds at Pemberley

From politics, it was an easy step to silence.

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

You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope. Tell me not that I am too late, that such precious feelings are gone for ever. I offer myself to you again with a heart even more your own, than when you almost broke it eight years and a half ago.

A ladys imagination is very rapid it jumps from admiration to love from love to matrimony in a moment.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

What is right to be done cannot be done too soon.

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

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.

Perfect happiness, even in memory, is not common.

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

The distance is nothing when one has a motive.

Woman is fine for her own satisfaction alone. No man will admire her the more, no woman will like her the better for it. Neatness and fashion are enough for the former, and a something of shabbiness or impropriety will be most endearing to the latter.

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

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

Every man is surrounded by a neighborhood of voluntary spies.

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

I am greatly pleased with your account of Fanny; I found her in the summer just as you describe, almost another sister, I could not have supposed that a niece would ever have been so much to me. She is quite after one's own heart.

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.

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.

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

A man would always wish to give a woman a better home than the one he takes her from; and he who can do it, where there is no doubt of her regard, must, I think, be the happiest of mortals.

One man's style must not be the rule of another's.

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

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.

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

Good-humoured, unaffected girls, will not do for a man who has been used to sensible women. They are two distinct orders of being.

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.

He was not an ill disposed young man unless to be rather cold hearted and rather selfish is to be ill disposed

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.

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

I cannot speak well enough to be unintelligible.

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

Children of the same family, the same blood, with the same first associations and habits, have some means of enjoyment in their power, which no subsequent connections can supply

Life seems but a quick succession of busy nothings.

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

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 could not sit down to write a serious romance under any other motive than to save my life.

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

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

Respect for right conduct is felt by every body.

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.

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

Those who have not more must be satisfied with what they have.

A single woman, of good fortune, is always respectable, and may be as sensible and pleasant as any body else.

Nobody minds having what is too good for them.

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

Good apple pies are a considerable part of our domestic happiness.

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.

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

An artist cannot do anything slovenly.

Angry people are not always wise.

Those who do not complain are never pitied.

Husbands and wives generally understand when opposition will be vain.

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

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?

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.

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

Let other pens dwell on guilt and misery.

To yield readily--easily--to the persuasion of a friend is no merit.... To yield without conviction is no compliment to the understanding of either.

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

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

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

Every savage can dance.

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

Children of the same family the same blood with the same first associations and habits have some means of enjoyment in their power which no subsequent connections can supply.

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

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

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

Children of the same family the same blood with the same first associations and habits have some means of enjoyment in their power which no subsequent connections can supply...

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

If things are going untowardly one month, they are sure to mend the next.

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

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

Think only of the past as its remembrance gives you pleasure.

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

There is nothing like staying at home for real comfort.

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.