Jane Austen Quotes

582 Sourced Quotes

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.

Jane Austen
I cannot anyhow continue to find people agreeable; I respect Mrs. Chamberlayne for doing her hair well, but cannot feel a more tender sentiment. Miss Langley is like any other short girl, with a broad nose and wide mouth, fashionable dress and exposed bosom. Adm. Stanhope is a gentleman-like man, but then his legs are too short and his tail too long.

Jane Austen
You will have a great deal of unreserved discourse with Mrs. K., I dare say, upon this subject, as well as upon many other of our family matters. Abuse everybody but me.

Jane Austen
My head-dress was a bugle-band like the border to my gown, and a flower of Mrs Tilson's. I depended upon hearing something of the evening from Mr. W. K., and am very well satisfied with his notice of me — "A pleasing looking young woman" — that must do; one cannot pretend to anything better now; thankful to have it continued a few years longer!

Jane Austen
It was not in her nature, however, to increase her vexations by dwelling on them. She was confident of having performed her duty, and to fret over unavoidable evils, or augment them by anxiety, was not part of her disposition.

Jane Austen
Mrs. Jennings was a widow, with an ample jointure. She had only two daughters, both of whom she had lived to see respectably married, and she had now therefore nothing to do but to marry all the rest of the world.

Jane Austen
That is what I like; that is what a young man ought to be. Whatever be his pursuits, his eagerness in them should know no moderation, and leave him no sense of fatigue.

Jane Austen
Time will generally lessen the interest of every attachment not within the daily circle.

Jane Austen
Mr. Digweed has used us basely. Handsome is as handsome does; he is therefore a very ill-looking man.

Jane Austen
If any young men come for Mary or Kitty, send them in, for I am quite as leisure.

Jane Austen
What praise is more valuable than the praise of an intelligent servant?

Jane Austen
There were several Battles between the Yorkists and the Lancastrians, in which the former (as they ought) usually won.

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

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

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
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