Quotes by Jane Austen
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Indulge your imagination in every possible flight.

I go too long without picking up a good book, I feel like I've done nothing useful with my life.

My good qualities are under your protection, and you are to exaggerate them as much as possible; and, in return, it belongs to me to find occasion for teasing and quarreling with you as often as may be.

A man does not recover from such devotion of the heart to such a woman! He ought not; he does not.

She mediated, by turns, on broken promises and broken arches, phaetons and false hangings, Tilneys and trap-doors.

A few months more, and he, perhaps, may be walking here.

She loved Anne better than she loved her own abilities.

Anne, who had been a most attentive listener to the whole, left the room, to seek the comfort of cool air for her flushed cheeks; and as she walked along a favourite grove, said, with a gentle sigh, A few months more, and he, perhaps, may be walking here.

Half the sum of attraction, on either side, might have been enough, for he had nothing to do, and she had hardly any body to love. (of Anne Elliot and Captain Wentworth, Persuasion).

Such a letter was not to be soon recovered from... Every moment rather brought fresh agitation. It was an overpowering happiness.

We live at home, quiet, confined, and our feelings prey upon us.

My playing is no more like her's, than a lamp is like sunshine.

I cannot, I cannot,' cried Marianne; 'leave me, leave me, if I distress you; leave me, hate me, forget me! But do not torture me so. Oh! how easy for those who have no sorrow of their own to talk of extertion!

That is a compliment which gives me no pleasure.

I do not know where the error lies. I do not pretend to set people right, but I do see they are often wrong.

He could find no better relief to his feelings than by giving his housekeeper directions that every possible attention might be paid to the sick lady and her sister.

Good company requires only birth, education, and manners, and with regard to education is not very nice. Birth and good manners are essential; but a little learning is by no means a dangerous thing in good company; on the contrary, it will do very well.

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.

I am happier than Jane; she only smiles, I laugh. Mr. Darcy sends you all the love in the world, that he can spare from me.

It taught me to hope, as I had scarcely ever allowed myself to hope before.

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

Far be it from me, my dear sister, to depreciate such pleasures. They would doubtless be congenial with the generality of female minds. But I confess they would have no charms for me. I should infinitely prefer a book.

I have observed...in the course of my life, that if things are going outwardly one month, they are sure to mend the next.

A very little quiet reflection was enough to satisfy Emma.

That is the case with us all, papa. One half of the world cannot understand the pleasures of the other.

One part of the world does not understand the pleasures of the other.

But her mind had never been in such perturbation; and it needed a very strong effort to appear attentive and cheerful till the usual hour of separating allowed her the relief of quiet reflection.

I cannot make speeches, Emma:' he soon resumed, and in a tone of such sincere, decided, intelligible tenderness as was tolerably convincing. 'If I loved you less, I might be able to talk about it more.

It is such a happiness when good people get together -- and they always do.

There was no being displeased with such an encourager, for his admiration made him discern a likeness before it was possible.

Fortunately for those who pay their court through such foibles, a fond mother, though, in pursuit of praise for her children, the most rapacious of human beings, is likewise the most credulous; her demands are exorbitant; but she will swallow any thing.

I am rather impatient to know the fate of my best gown.

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

As a brother, a landlord, a master, she considered how many people's happiness were in his guardianship! -- How much of pleasure or pain it was in his power to bestow! -- How much of good or evil must be done by him!

It is particularly incumbent on those who never change their opinion, to be secure of judging properly at first.

When I fall in love, it will be forever.

I do not think I ever opened a book in my life which had not something to say upon woman's inconstancy. Songs and proverbs, all talk of woman's fickleness. But perhaps you will say, these were all written by men.

I leave it to be settled, by whomsoever it may concern, whether the tendency of this work be altogether to recommend parental tyranny, or reward filial disobedience.

Oh! I am delighted with the book! I should like to spend my whole life in reading it.

I have no more to say. If this be the case, he deserves you. I could not have parted with you, my Lizzy, to any one less worthy.

You have everybody dearest to you always at hand; I, probably, never shall again; and therefore, till I have outlived all my affections, a post office, I think, must always have power to draw me out in worse weather than today.

Every body at all addicted to letter writing, without having much to say, which will include a large proportion of the female world at least.

Every body allows that the talent of writing agreeable letters is peculiarly female.

Mrs. Allen was one of that numerous class of females, whose society can raise no other emotion than surprise at there being any men in the world who could like them well enough to marry them. She had neither beauty, genius, accomplishment, nor manner.

Her sentiments towards him were compounded of all that was respectful, grateful, confiding, and tender.

You must try not to mind growing up into a pretty woman.

Oh! write, write. Finish it at once. Let there be an end of this suspense. Fix, commit, condemn yourself.

I do not like to have people throw themselves away; but everybody should marry as soon as they can do it to advantage.

I am not born to sit still and do nothing. If I lose the game, it shall not be from not striving for it.

There is not one in a hundred of either sex, who is not taken in when they marry. ... it is, of all transactions, the one in which people expect most from others, and are least honest themselves.

She was feeling, thinking, trembling about everything; agitated, happy, miserable, infinitely obliged, absolutely angry.

Fanny! You are killing me! No man dies of love but on the stage, Mr. Crawford.

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.

You must really begin to harden yourself to the idea of being worth looking at.

How wonderful, how very wonderful the operations of time, and the changes of the human mind!

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

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

Every thing he did was right. Every thing he said was clever. If their evenings at the park included cards, he cheated himself and all the rest of the party to get her a good hand.

Mama, the more I know of the world, the more I am convinced that I shall never see a man whom I can really love.

Had I not been bound to silence I could have provided proof enough of a broken heart, even for you.

That is what I like; that is what a young man ought to be. Whatever be his pursuits, his eagerness in them should know no moderation, and leave him no sense of fatigue.

What do you know of my heart? What do you know of anything but your own suffering?

Marianne Dashwood was born to an extraordinary fate. She was born to discover the falsehood of her own opinions, and to counteract, by her conduct, her most favourite maxims.

For what do we live, but to make sport by subjecting our neighbors to endless discretionary review for minor additions?

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.

Trusting that you will some time or other do me greater justice than you can do now.

The most incomprehensible thing in the world to a man, is a woman who rejects his offer of marriage!

Mr. Knightley, if I have not spoken, it is because I am afraid I will awaken myself from this dream.

Better be without sense than misapply it as you do.

A man always imagines a woman to be ready for anybody who asks her.

Marry me. Marry me, my wonderful, darling friend.

Men of sense, whatever you may choose to say, do not want silly wives.

Yes, you know enough of my frankness to believe me capable of that. After abusing you so abominably to your face, I could have no scruple in abusing you to all your relations.

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

I will not say that your mulberry trees are dead; but I am afraid they're not alive.

I mean to be too rich to lament or to feel anything of the sort. A large income is the best recipe for happiness I ever heard of. It certainly may secure all the myrtle and turkey part of it.

It is a lovely night, and they are much to be pitied who have not been taught to feel in some degree as you do-who have not at least been given a taste for nature in early life. They lose a great deal.

A novel must show how the world truly is. Somehow, reveals the true source of our actions.

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

Where people wish to attach, they should always be ignorant. To come with a well−informed mind is to come with an inability of administering to the vanity of others, which a sensible person would always wish to avoid.

Portable property is happiness in a pocketbook.

If I had ever learnt, I should have been a great proficient.

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.

Mary wished to say something very sensible, but knew not how.

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

How little of permanent happiness could belong to a couple who were only brought together because their passions were stronger than their virtue.

It is very often nothing but our own vanity that deceives us. Women fancy admiration means more than it does. And men take care that they should.

The more I see of the world, the more am I dissatisfied with it.

Yes, replied Darcy, who could contain himself no longer, but that was when I first knew her; for it is many months since I have considered her as one of the handsomest women of my acquaintance.

There are few people whom I really love and still fewer of whom I think well.

You are mistaken, Mr. Darcy, if you suppose that the mode of your declaration affected me in any other way, than as it spared the concern which I might have felt in refusing you, had you behaved in a more gentlemanlike manner.

Till this moment I never knew myself.

You may only call me Mrs. Darcy... when you are completely, and perfectly, and incandescently happy.

One cannot fix one's eyes on the commonest natural production without finding food for a rambling fancy.

But a sanguine temper, though for ever expecting more good than occurs, does not always pay for its hopes by any proportionate depression. it soon flies over the present failure, and begins to hope again.

An annuity is a very serious business.

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

A sick child is always the mother's property; her own feelings generally make it so.

Everybody's heart is open, you know, when they have recently escaped from severe pain, or are recovering the blessing of health.

From politics it was an easy step to silence.