Jane Austen Quotes

477 Quotes of Timeless Wisdom, Love, Friendship, Society, and Human Nature

“When I fall in love, it will be forever.”

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

“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.”

“Angry people are not always wise.”

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

“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!”

“We are all fools in love”

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

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

“You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope… I have loved none but you.”

“There could have been no two hearts so open, no tastes so similar, no feelings so in unison”

“There is no charm equal to tenderness of heart.”

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

“I declare after all there is no enjoyment like reading! How much sooner one tires of any thing than of a book! -- When I have a house of my own, I shall be miserable if I have not an excellent library.”

“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.”

“I am the happiest creature in the world. Perhaps other people have said so before, but not one with such justice. I am happier even than Jane; she only smiles, I laugh.”

“From the very beginning— from the first moment, I may almost say— of my acquaintance with you, your manners, impressing me with the fullest belief of your arrogance, your conceit, and your selfish disdain of the feelings of others, were such as to form the groundwork of disapprobation on which succeeding events have built so immovable a dislike; and I had not known you a month before I felt that you were the last man in the world whom I could ever be prevailed on to marry.”

“Till this moment I never knew myself.”

“You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you.

-Mr. Darcy”

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

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

“Had I been in love, I could not have been more wretchedly blind. But vanity, not love, has been my folly.”

“I am only resolved to act in that manner, which will, in my own opinion, constitute my happiness, without reference to you, or to any person so wholly unconnected with me.”

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

“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.”

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

“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.”

“Full many a flower is born to blush unseen,
And waste it's fragrance on the desert air.”

“my courage always rises with every attempt to intimidate me.”

“She is loveliness itself.”

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

“Your countenance perfectly informs me that you were in company last night with the person, whom you think the most agreeable in the world, the person who interests you at this present time, more than all the rest of the world put together.”

“How clever you are, to know something of which you are ignorant.”

“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.”

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

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“Ah! there is nothing like staying at home for real comfort.”

“The Very first moment I beheld him, my heart was irrevocably gone.”

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

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

“I have not the pleasure of understanding you.”

“I may have lost my heart, but not my self-control.”

“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.”

“You are too generous to trifle with me. If your feelings are still what they were last April, tell me so at once. My affections and wishes are unchanged; but one word from you will silence me on this subject for ever.”

“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.'
'You are mistaken,' said he gently, 'that is not good company, that is the best.”

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

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

“We all know him to be a proud, unpleasant sort of man; but this would be nothing if you really liked him.”

“An unhappy alternative is before you, Elizabeth. 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.”

“He is a gentleman, and I am a gentleman's daughter. So far we are equal.”

“If I could but know his heart, everything would become easy.”

“My good opinion once lost is lost forever.”

“A girl likes to be crossed a little in love now and then.
It is something to think of”

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

“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.”

“What strange creatures brothers are!”

“Her heart did whisper that he had done it for her.”

“I declare after all there is no enjoyment like reading! How much sooner one tires of anything than of a book!”

“The distance is nothing when one has a motive.”