Jane Austen Quotes

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

“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.”

“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…”

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

“.. that sanguine expectation of happiness which is happiness itself”

“She was stronger alone; and her own good sense so well supported her, that her firmness was as unshaken, her appearance of cheerfulness as invariable, as, with regrets so poignant and so fresh, it was possible for them to be.”

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

“Heaven forbid! -- That would be the greatest misfortune of all! -- To find a man agreeable whom one is determined to hate! -- Do not wish me such an evil.”

“It is very often nothing but our own vanity that deceives us.”

“Books--oh! no. I am sure we never read the same, or not with the same
feelings."

"I am sorry you think so; but if that be the case, there can at least be
no want of subject. We may compare our different opinions.”

“Sometimes one is guided by what they say of themselves, and very frequently by what other people say of them, without giving oneself time to deliberate and judge."

-Elinor Dashwood”

“And to all this she must yet add something more substantial, in the improvement of her mind by extensive reading.”

“[N]obody minds having what is too good for them.”

“I was so anxious to do what is right that I forgot to do whatright.”

“You expect me to account for opinions which you choose to call mine, but which I have never acknowledged.”

“But remember that the pain of parting from friends will be felt by everybody at times, whatever be their education or state. Know your own happiness. You want nothing but patience; or give it a more fascinating name: call it hope.”

“I have no talent for certainty.”

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

“Every man is surrounded by a neighborhood of voluntary spies.”

“Money can only give happiness where there is nothing else to give it.”

“I have the highest respect for your nerves, they are my old friends.”

“My ideas flow so rapidly that I have not time to express them──by which means my letters sometimes convey no ideas at all to my correspondents.”

“And have you never known the pleasure and triumph of a lucky guess? I pity you. I thought you cleverer; for depend upon it, a lucky guess is never merely luck. There is always some talent in it.”

“I do not find it easy to talk to people I don't know.”

“Everybody likes to go their own way–to choose their own time and manner of devotion.”

“To love is to burn, to be on fire.”

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

“Pray, pray be composed, and do not betray what you feel to every body present”

“Mrs. Jennings was a widow, with an ample jointure. She had only two daughters, both of whom she had lived to see respectably married, and she had now therefore nothing to do but to marry all the rest of the world.”

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

“It was a delightful visit;-perfect, in being much too short.”

“Yes, I found myself, by insensible degrees, sincerely fond of her; and the happiest hours of my life were what I spent with her.”

“I do not cough for my own amusement.”

“Vanity, not love, has been my folly.”

“Next to being married, a girl likes being crossed in love a little now and again.”

“We are so vain that we even care for the opinion of those we don't care for.”

“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.”

“Where people are really attached, poverty itself is wealth.”

“I have no pretensions whatever to that kind of elegance which consists in tormenting a respectable man.”

“No one who had ever seen Catherine Morland in her infancy, would have supposed her born to be a heroine… But from fifteen to seventeen she was in training for a heroine…”

“I love you. Most ardently.”

“I am determined that nothing but the deepest love could ever induce me into matrimony. [Elizabeth]”

“There are very few who have heart enough to be really in love without encouragement”

“Brandon is just the kind of man whom every body speaks well of, and nobody cares about; whom all are delighted to see, and nobody remembers to talk to.”

“Real solemn history, I cannot be interested in…. The quarrels of popes and kings, with wars and pestilences in every page; the men all so good for nothing, and hardly any women at all.”

“Well, my dear," said Mr. Bennet, when Elizabeth had read the note aloud, "if your daughter should have a dangerous fit of illness—if she should die, it would be a comfort to know that it was all in pursuit of Mr. Bingley, and under your orders.”

“She attracted him more than he liked.”

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

“But Catherine did not know her own advantages - did not know that a good-looking girl, with an affectionate heart and a very ignorant mind, cannot fail of attracting a clever young man, unless circumstances are particularly untoward.”

“Success supposes endeavour.”