Jane Austen Quotes

582 Sourced Quotes

Now they were as strangers; nay worse than strangers, for they could never become acquainted.

Jane Austen
It has been coming on so gradually, that I hardly know when it began. But I believe I must date it from my first seeing his beautiful grounds at Pemberley.

Jane Austen
But that is one great difference between us. Compliments always take you by surprise, and me never.

Jane Austen
There is not the least wit in my nature. I am a very matter-of-fact, plain-spoken being, and may blunder on the borders of a repartee for half-an-hour together without striking it out.

Jane Austen
It isn't what we say or think that defines us, but what we do.

Jane Austen
It taught me to hope," said he, "as I had scarcely ever allowed myself to hope before." Mr. Darcy - Pride and Prejudice

Jane Austen
Facts or opinions which are to pass through the hands of so many, to be misconceived by folly in one, and ignorance in another, can hardly have much truth left.

Jane Austen
A single woman with a narrow income must be a ridiculous, disagreeable old maid, the proper sport of boys and girls, but a single woman of fortune is always respectable, and may be as sensible and pleasant as anybody else.

Jane Austen
I am now convinced that I have never been much in love; for had I really experienced that pure and elevating passion, I should at present detest his very name, and wish him all manner of evil. But my feelings are not only cordial towards him; they are even impartial towards her. I cannot find out that I hate her at all, or that I am in the least unwilling to think her a very good sort of girl. There can be no love in all this.

Jane Austen
She was happy, she knew she was happy, and knew she ought to be happy.

Jane Austen
But Shakespeare one gets acquainted with without knowing how. It is a part of an Englishman's constitution. His thoughts and beauties are so spread abroad that one touches them everywhere; one is intimate with him by instinct. No man of any brain can open at a good part of one of his plays without falling into the flow of his meaning immediately.

Jane Austen
Here I am once more in this scene of dissipation and vice, and I begin already to find my morals corrupted.

Jane Austen
I have been meditating on the very great pleasure which a pair of fine eyes in the face of a pretty woman can bestow.

Jane Austen
May I ask whether these pleasing attentions proceed from the impulse of the moment, or are the result of previous study?

Jane Austen
Nay," cried Bingley, "this is too much, to remember at night all the foolish things that were said in the morning.

Jane Austen
How horrible it is to have so many people killed! And what a blessing that one cares for none of them!

Jane Austen
Yes, vanity is a weakness indeed. But pride - where there is a real superiority of mind, pride will be always under good regulation.

Jane Austen
It is not everyone,' said Elinor, 'who has your passion for dead leaves.

Jane Austen
She looked back as well as she could; but it was all confusion. She had taken up the idea, she supposed and made everything bend to it.

Jane Austen
Good-humoured, unaffected girls, will not do for a man who has been used to sensible women. They are two distinct orders of being.

Jane Austen
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.

Jane Austen
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.

Jane Austen
What should I do with your strong, manly, spirited sketches, full of variety and glow? How could I possibly join them on to the little bit (two inches wide) of ivory on which I work with so fine a brush, as produces little effect after much labour?

Jane Austen
I often think it odd that it should be so dull, for a great deal of it must be invention.
On history

Jane Austen
Could they be perpetrated without being known, in a country like this, where social and literary intercourse is on such a footing, where every man is surrounded by a neighbourhood of voluntary spies, and where roads and newspapers lay everything open?

Jane Austen
She denied none of it aloud, and agreed to none of it in private.

Jane Austen
The folly of people's not staying comfortably at home when they can!

Jane Austen
Where a man does his best with only moderate powers, he will have the advantage over negligent superiority.

Jane Austen
I cannot speak well enough to be unintelligible.

Jane Austen
Nothing is more deceitful than the appearance of humility. It is often only carelessness of opinion, and sometimes an indirect boast.

Jane Austen