Jane Austen Quotes

582 Sourced Quotes

... why did we wait for any thing? — why not seize the pleasure at once? — How often is happiness destroyed by preparation, foolish preparation!

Jane Austen
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.

Jane Austen
My Emma, does not every thing serve to prove more and more the beauty of truth and sincerity in all our dealings with each other?

Jane Austen
The ladies here probably exchanged looks which meant, 'Men never know when things are dirty or not;' and the gentlemen perhaps thought each to himself, 'Women will have their little nonsenses and needless cares.'

Jane Austen
I have never yet found that the advice of a Sister could prevent a young Man's being in love if he chose it.

Jane Austen
Yet there it was not love. It was a little fever of admiration; but it might, probably must, end in love with some

Jane Austen
Mr. Darcy began to feel the danger of paying Elizabeth too much attention.

Jane Austen
The pleasures of friendship, of unreserved conversation, of similarity of taste and opinions will make good amends for orange wine.

Jane Austen
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.

Jane Austen
Everybody likes to go their own way–to choose their own time and manner of devotion.

Jane Austen
From all that I can collect by your manner of talking, you must be two of the silliest girls in the country. I have suspected it some time, but I am now convinced.

Jane Austen
Shakespeare one gets acquainted with without knowing how. It is 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.

Jane Austen
No temper could be more cheerful than hers, or possess, in a greater degree, that sanguine expectation of happiness which is happiness itself.

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

Jane Austen
My dear Mr. Bennet," said his lady to him one day, "have you heard that Netherfield Park is let at last?

Jane Austen
Loss of virtue in a female is irretrievable…one false step involves her in endless ruin.

Jane Austen
My object then," replied Darcy, "was to show you, by every civility in my power, that I was not so mean as to resent the past; and I hoped to obtain your forgiveness, to lessen your ill opinion, by letting you see that your reproofs had been attended to. How soon any other wishes introduced themselves I can hardly tell, but I believe in about half an hour after I had seen you.

Jane Austen
A lady's imagination is very rapid; it jumps from admiration to love, from love to matrimony in a moment.

Jane Austen
The younger brother must help to pay for the pleasures of the elder.

Jane Austen
I could not be happy with a man whose taste did not in every point coincide with my own. He must enter in all my feelings; the same books, the same music must charm us both.

Jane Austen
Never could I expect to be so truly beloved and important; so always first and always right in any man's eyes as I am in my father's...

Jane Austen
I am sure of this, that if everybody was to drink their bottle a day, there would be not half the disorders in the world there are now. It would be a famous good thing for us all.

Jane Austen
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.

Jane Austen
Now be sincere; did you admire me for my impertinence?" "For the liveliness of your mind, I did.

Jane Austen
I never wish to offend, but I am so foolishly shy, that I often seem negligent, when I am only kept back by my natural awkwardness... Shyness is only the effect of a sense of inferiority in some way or other. If I could persuade myself that my manners were perfectly easy and graceful, I should not be shy.

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

Jane Austen
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.

Jane Austen
But people themselves alter so much, that there is something new to be observed in them for ever.

Jane Austen
Selfishness must always be forgiven, you know, because there is no hope of a cure.

Jane Austen
Mr. Collins is a conceited, pompous, narrow-minded, silly man; you know he is, as well as I do; and you must feel, as well as I do, that the woman who married him cannot have a proper way of thinking.

Jane Austen