Jane Austen

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.