Jane Austen Quotes

582 Sourced Quotes

The advantages of natural folly in a beautiful girl have been already set forth by the capital pen of a sister author; and to her treatment of the subject I will only add, in justice to men, that though to the larger and more trifling part of the sex, imbecility in females is a great enhancement of their personal charms, there is a portion of them too reasonable and too well informed themselves to desire anything more in woman than ignorance

Jane Austen

A sick child is always the mother's property; her own feelings generally make it so.

Jane Austen

Vanity was the beginning and the end of Sir Walter Elliot's character; vanity of person and of situation.

Jane Austen

I am no indiscriminate novel reader. The mere trash of the common circulating library I hold in the highest contempt.

Jane Austen

Nobody could catch cold by the sea; nobody wanted appetite by the sea; nobody wanted spirits; nobody wanted strength. Sea air was healing, softening, relaxing - fortifying and bracing - seemingly just as was wanted - sometimes one, sometimes the other. If the sea breeze failed, the seabath was the certain corrective; and where bathing disagreed, the sea air alone was evidently designed by nature for the cure.

Jane Austen

We must consider what Miss. Fairfax quits, before we condemn her taste for what she goes to.

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

Here I have opportunity enough for the exercise of my talent, as the chief of my time is spent in conversation.

Jane Austen

But are they all horrid, are you sure they are all horrid? [Referring to Gothic novels, fashionable in England at the beginning of the 19th century, but frowned upon in polite society.]

Jane Austen

How wonderful, how very wonderful the operations of time, and the changes of the human mind!

Jane Austen

To take a dislike to a young man, only because he appeared to be of a different disposition from himself, was unworthy the real liberality of mind

Jane Austen

I would rather have young people settle on a small income at once, and have to struggle with a few difficulties together, than be involved in a long engagement.

Jane Austen

Family connexions were always worth preserving, good company always worth seeking.

Jane Austen

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.

Jane Austen

A man... must have a very good opinion of himself when he asks people to leave their own fireside, and encounter such a day as this, for the sake of coming to see him. He must think himself a most agreeable fellow.

Jane Austen

I have made myself two or three caps to wear of evenings since I came home, and they save me a world of torment as to hair-dressing, which at present gives me no trouble beyond washing and brushing, for my long hair is always plaited up out of sight, and my short hair curls well enough to want no papering.

Jane Austen

I am come, young ladies, in a very moralizing strain, to observe that our pleasures of this world are always to be for, and that we often purchase them at a great disadvantage, giving readi-monied actual happiness for a draft on the future, that may not be honoured.

Jane Austen

I consider a country-dance as an emblem of marriage. Fidelity and complaisance are the principle duties of both; and those men who do not choose to dance or to marry them selves, have no business with the partners or wives of the neighbors.

Jane Austen

To be claimed as a good, though in an improper style, is at least better than being rejected as no good at all.

Jane Austen

Good company requires only birth, education, and manners, and with regard to education is not very nice. Birth and good manners are essential; but a little learning is by no means a dangerous thing in good company; on the contrary, it will do very well.

Jane Austen

It is a difference of opinion which does not admit of proof. We each begin probably with a little bias towards our own sex, and upon that bias build every circumstance in favour of it which has occurred within our own circle;

Jane Austen

At my time of life opinions are tolerably fixed. It is not likely that I should now see or hear anything to change them.

Jane Austen

But there was happiness elsewhere which no description can reach.

Jane Austen

An agreeable manner may set off handsome features, but can never alter plain ones.

Jane Austen

Everybody has their taste in noises as well as in other matters; and sounds are quite innoxious, or most distressing, by their sort rather than their quantity.

Jane Austen

It does not appear to me that my hand is unworthy your acceptance, or that the establishment I can offer would be any other than highly desirable.

Jane Austen

I can safely say, that the happiest part of my life has been spent on board a ship.

Jane Austen

Provided that nothing like useful knowledge could be gained from them, provided they were all story and no reflection, she had never any objection to books at all.

Jane Austen

Where any one body of educated men, of whatever denomination, are condemned indiscriminately, there must be a deficiency of information, or...of something else.

Jane Austen

I am not born to sit still and do nothing. If I lose the game, it shall not be from not striving for it.

Jane Austen