Jane Austen Quotes

582 Sourced Quotes

There seems something more speakingly incomprehensible in the powers, the failures, the inequalities of memory, than in any other of our intelligences. The memory is sometimes so retentive, so serviceable, so obedient — at others, so bewildered and so weak — and at others again, so tyrannic, so beyond control!

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
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
People that marry can never part, but must go and keep house together. People that dance only stand opposite each other in a long room for half an hour.

Jane Austen
With them, to wish was to hope, and to hope was to expect.

Jane Austen
I will not adopt that ungenerous and impolitic custom so common with novel writers, of degrading by their contemptuous censure the very performances, to the number of which they are themselves adding?joining with their greatest enemies in bestowing the harshest epithets on such works, and scarcely ever permitting them to be read by their own heroine, who, if she accidentally take up a novel, is sure to turn over its insipid leaves with disgust.

Jane Austen
We saw a countless number of post-chaises full of boys pass by yesterday morning — full of future heroes, legislators, fools, and villains. You have never thanked me for my last letter, which went by the cheese. I cannot bear not to be thanked.

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

Jane Austen
He certainly is very agreeable, and I give you leave to like him. You have liked many a stupider person.

Jane Austen
Those who have not more must be satisfied with what they have.

Jane Austen
Without scheming to do wrong, or to make others unhappy, there may be error and there may be misery. Thoughtlessness, want of attention to other people's feelings, and want of resolution, will do the business.

Jane Austen
Ah! there is nothing like staying at home for real comfort.

Jane Austen
Where so many hours have been spent in convincing myself that I am right, is there not some reason to fear I may be wrong?

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
Undoubtedly... there is a meanness in all the arts which ladies sometimes condescend to employ for captivation. What bears affinity to cunning is despicable.

Jane Austen
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." "And yours," he replied with a smile, "is wilfully to misunderstand them.

Jane Austen
Anne hoped she had outlived the age of blushing; but the age of emotion she certainly had not.

Jane Austen
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.

Jane Austen
His feelings are warm, but I can imagine them rather changeable.

Jane Austen
Far be it from me, my dear sister, to depreciate such pleasures. They would doubtless be congenial with the generality of female minds. But I confess they would have no charms for me. I should infinitely prefer a book.

Jane Austen
A woman, especially if she has the misfortune of knowing anything, should conceal it as well as she can.

Jane Austen
The evergreen! How beautiful, how welcome, how wonderful the evergreen! When one thinks of it, how astonishing a variety of nature! In some countries we know that the tree that sheds its leaf is the variety, but that does not make it less amazing, that the same soil and the same sun should nurture plants differing in the first rule and law of their existence.

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
How she might have felt had there been no Captain Wentworth in the case, was not worth enquiry; for there was a Captain Wentworth: and be the conclusion of the present suspense good or bad, her affection would be his forever. Their union, she believed, could not divide her more from other men, than their final separation.

Jane Austen
We live at home, quiet, confined, and our feelings prey upon us.

Jane Austen