Jane Austen (1775–1817) was an English novelist known primarily for her six major novels, which interpret, critique, and comment upon the British landed gentry at the end of the 18th century.
Here is a collection of Jane Austen most inspiring quotes: Jane Austen quotes about life, happiness, books, reading and friendship. Jane Austen quotes about beauty, kindness and feminism. Quotes and sayings on love, romantic, women and marriage by Jane Austen.
Jane Austen Quotes and Sayings
To be fond of dancing was a certain step towards falling in love.
The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid.
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.
There is no charm equal to tenderness of heart.
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.
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.
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.
When I fall in love, it will be forever.
A lady's imagination is very rapid; it jumps from admiration to love, from love to matrimony in a moment.
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.
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.
For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbors, and laugh at them in our turn?
I do not want people to be very agreeable, as it saves me the trouble of liking them a great deal.
I always deserve the best treatment because I never put up with any other.
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!
You must learn some of my philosophy. Think only of the past as its remembrance gives you pleasure.
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.
You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you.
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.
To wish was to hope, and to hope was to expect.
Angry people are not always wise.
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.
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.
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.
Till this moment I never knew myself.
You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope...I have loved none but you.
Life seems but a quick succession of busy nothings.
But for my own part, if a book is well written, I always find it too short.
My good opinion once lost is lost forever.
What are men to rocks and mountains?
We all know him to be a proud, unpleasant sort of man; but this would be nothing if you really liked him.
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.
He is a gentleman, and I am a gentleman's daughter. So far we are equal.
I could easily forgive his pride, if he had not mortified mine.
If I could but know his heart, everything would become easy.
There is nothing like staying at home, for real comfort.
There is, I believe, in every disposition a tendency to some particular evil, a natural defect, which not even the best education can overcome. And your defect is a propensity to hate everybody.
I must learn to be content with being happier than I deserve.
A girl likes to be crossed a little in love now and then. It is something to think of.
The Very first moment I beheld him, my heart was irrevocably gone.
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.
If I loved you less, I might be able to talk about it more.
Her heart did whisper that he had done it for her.
It isn't what we say or think that defines us, but what we do.
There could have been no two hearts so open, no tastes so similar, no feelings so in unison.
Silly things do cease to be silly if they are done by sensible people in an impudent way.
The distance is nothing when one has a motive.
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.
Nothing ever fatigues me, but doing what I do not like.
But people themselves alter so much, that there is something new to be observed in them for ever.
Laugh as much as you choose, but you will not laugh me out of my opinion.
If a book is well written, I always find it too short.
I wish, as well as everybody else, to be perfectly happy; but, like everybody else, it must be in my own way.
Let us never underestimate the power of a well-written letter.
Friendship is certainly the finest balm for the pangs of disappointed love.
A man does not recover from such devotion of the heart to such a woman! He ought not; he does not.
What strange creatures brothers are!
Time will explain.
I have not the pleasure of understanding you.
Know your own happiness. You want nothing but patience- or give it a more fascinating name, call it hope.
She hoped to be wise and reasonable in time; but alas! Alas! She must confess to herself that she was not wise yet.
I may have lost my heart, but not my self-control.
Had I been in love, I could not have been more wretchedly blind. But vanity, not love, has been my folly.
I cannot speak well enough to be unintelligible.
I declare after all there is no enjoyment like reading! How much sooner one tires of anything than of a book!
I was quiet, but I was not blind.
Nobody can tell what I suffer! But it is always so. Those who do not complain are never pitied.
Follies and nonsense, whims and inconsistencies do divert me, I own, and I laugh at them whenever I can.
Run mad as often as you choose, but do not faint!
How quick come the reasons for approving what we like.
We have all a better guide in ourselves, if we would attend to it, than any other person can be.
Oh, Lizzy! do anything rather than marry without affection.
Better be without sense than misapply it as you do.
Selfishness must always be forgiven you know, because there is no hope of a cure.
It is not time or opportunity that is to determine intimacy; - it is disposition alone. Seven years would be insufficient to make some people acquainted with each other, and seven days are more than enough for others.
Men of sense, whatever you may choose to say, do not want silly wives.
All the privilege I claim for my own sex (it is not a very enviable one: you need not covet it), is that of loving longest, when existence or when hope is gone!
There are people, who the more you do for them, the less they will do for themselves.
No man is offended by another man's admiration of the woman he loves; it is the woman only who can make it a torment.
When pain is over, the remembrance of it often becomes a pleasure.
She was sensible and clever, but eager in everything; her sorrows, her joys, could have no moderation.
Were I to fall in love, indeed, it would be a different thing; but I have never been in love ; it is not my way, or my nature; and I do not think I ever shall.
I come here with no expectations, only to profess, now that I am at liberty to do so, that my heart is and always will be... yours.
A woman, especially if she have the misfortune of knowing anything, should conceal it as well as she can.
Do not consider me now as an elegant female intending to plague you, but as a rational creature speaking the truth from her heart.
I will be calm. I will be mistress of myself.
One half of the world cannot understand the pleasures of the other.
I have been used to consider poetry as "the food of love".
One man's ways may be as good as another's, but we all like our own best.
Which of all my important nothings shall I tell you first?
You must be the best judge of your own happiness.
She is tolerable, but not handsome enough to tempt me, and I am in no humor at present to give consequence to young ladies who are slighted by other men.
Without music, life would be a blank to me.
Stupid men are the only ones worth knowing after all.
Those who do not complain are never pitied.
Every man is surrounded by a neighborhood of voluntary spies.
A single woman with a very narrow income must be a ridiculous, disagreeable old maid - the proper sport of boys and girls; but a single woman of good fortune is always respectable, and may be as sensible and pleasant as anybody else.
One man's style must not be the rule of another's.
From politics, it was an easy step to silence.
What is right to be done cannot be done too soon.
One does not love a place the less for having suffered in it, unless it has been all suffering, nothing but suffering.
Respect for right conduct is felt by every body.
In nine cases out of ten, a woman had better show more affection than she feels.
What wild imaginations one forms where dear self is concerned! How sure to be mistaken!
Human nature is so well disposed towards those who are in interesting situations, that a young person, who either marries or dies, is sure of being kindly spoken of.
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.
Business, you know, may bring you money, but friendship hardly ever does.
My sore throats are always worse than anyone's.
A mind lively and at ease, can do with seeing nothing, and can see nothing that does not answer.
I would have everybody marry if they can do it properly: I do not like to have people throw themselves away; but everybody should marry as soon as they can do it to advantage.
Good-humoured, unaffected girls, will not do for a man who has been used to sensible women. They are two distinct orders of being.
A man would always wish to give a woman a better home than the one he takes her from; and he who can do it, where there is no doubt of her regard, must, I think, be the happiest of mortals.
Happiness in marriage is entirely a matter of chance.
A large income is the best recipe for happiness I ever heard of.
It is very difficult for the prosperous to be humble.
I cannot speak well enough to be unintelligible.
General benevolence, but not general friendship, made a man what he ought to be.
Where youth and diffidence are united, it requires uncommon steadiness of reason to resist the attraction of being called the most charming girl in the world.
One cannot be always laughing at a man without now and then stumbling on something witty.
To sit in the shade on a fine day and look upon verdure is the most perfect refreshment.
An artist cannot do anything slovenly.
Think only of the past as its remembrance gives you pleasure.
Every savage can dance.
Vanity working on a weak head, produces every sort of mischief.
Surprises are foolish things. The pleasure is not enhanced, and the inconvenience is often considerable.
We do not look in our great cities for our best morality.
Walter Scott has no business to write novels, especially good ones. It is not fair. He has fame and profit enough as a poet, and should not be taking the bread out of the mouths of other people.
If things are going untowardly one month, they are sure to mend the next.
If I loved you less, I might be able to talk about it more.
Let other pens dwell on guilt and misery.
They are much to be pitied who have not been given a taste for nature early in life.
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.
Nobody minds having what is too good for them.
Nothing is more deceitful than the appearance of humility. It is often only carelessness of opinion, and sometimes an indirect boast.
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.
Dress is at all times a frivolous distinction, and excessive solicitude about it often destroys its own aim.
I could not sit down to write a serious romance under any other motive than to save my life.
A person who can write a long letter with ease, cannot write ill.
None of us want to be in calm waters all our lives.
I have been a selfish being all my life, in practice, though not in principle.
Is not general incivility the very essence of love?
There are as many forms of love as there are moments in time.
It sometimes happens that a woman is handsomer at twenty-nine than she was ten years before.
Where an opinion is general, it is usually correct.
Her own thoughts and reflections were habitually her best companions.
Next to being married, a girl likes to be crossed in love a little now and then.
It is always incomprehensible to a man that a woman should ever refuse an offer of marriage.
To love is to burn, to be on fire.
Husbands and wives generally understand when opposition will be vain.
Single women have a dreadful propensity for being poor. Which is one very strong argument in favor of matrimony.
If adventures will not befall a young lady in her own village, she must seek them abroad.
To look almost pretty is an acquisition of higher delight to a girl who has been looking plain for the first fifteen years of her life than a beauty from her cradle can ever receive.
My heart is, and always will be, yours.
There is something so amiable in the prejudices of a young mind, that one is sorry to see them give way to the reception of more general opinions.
Nobody, who has not been in the interior of a family, can say what the difficulties of any individual of that family may be.
Self-knowledge is the first step to maturity.
There are certainly not so many men of large fortune in the world, as there are pretty women to deserve them.
And sometimes I have kept my feelings to myself, because I could find no language to describe them in.
I am afraid that the pleasantness of an employment does not always evince its propriety.
Perhaps it is our imperfections that make us so perfect for one another.
There is safety in reserve, but no attraction. One cannot love a reserved person.
Our scars make us know that our past was for real
Men have had every advantage of us in telling their own story. Education has been theirs in so much higher a degree; the pen has been in their hands. I will not allow books to prove anything.
Nothing is more deceitful than the appearance of humility.
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?
It is very unfair to judge any body's conduct, without an intimate knowledge of their situation.
To flatter and follow others, without being flattered and followed in turn, is but a state of half enjoyment.
Look into your own heart because who looks outside, dreams, but who looks inside awakes.
There is not one in a hundred of either sex who is not taken in when they marry.
It is only a novel... or, in short, only some work in which the greatest powers of the mind are displayed, in which the most thorough knowledge of human nature, the happiest delineation of its varieties, the liveliest effusions of wit and humour, are conveyed to the world in the best-chosen language.
I cannot make speeches, Emma...If I loved you less, I might be able to talk about it more. But you know what I am. You hear nothing but truth from me. I have blamed you, and lectured you, and you have borne it as no other woman in England would have borne it.
I have faults enough, but they are not, I hope, of understanding. My temper I dare not vouch for. It is, I believe, too little yielding - certainly too little for the convenience of the world. I cannot forget the follies and vices of other so soon as I ought, nor their offenses against myself. My feelings are not puffed about with every attempt to move them. My temper would perhaps be called resentful. My good opinion once lost, is lost forever.
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.
It would be mortifying to the feelings of many ladies, could they be made to understand how little the heart of a man is affected by what is costly or new in their attire... Woman is fine for her own satisfaction alone. No man will admire her the more, no woman will like her the better for it. Neatness and fashion are enough for the former, and a something of shabbiness or impropriety will be most endearing to the latter.
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