Jane Austen

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.