Jane Austen - Northanger Abbey (1817)

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She had nothing to do but to forgive herself and be happier than ever…

Jane Austen
But your mind is warped by an innate principle of general integrity, and, therefore, not accessible to the cool reasonings of family partiality, or a desire of revenge.

Jane Austen
What one means one day, you know, one may not mean the next. Circumstances change, opinions alter.

Jane Austen
Everybody's heart is open, you know, when they have recently escaped from severe pain, or are recovering the blessing of health.

Jane Austen
There could have been no two hearts so open, no tastes so similar, no feelings so in unison

Jane Austen
Catherine hoped at least to pass uncensured through the crowd. As for admiration, it was always very welcome when it came, but she did not depend on it.

Jane Austen
We certainly do not forget you, so soon as you forget us. It is, perhaps, our fate rather than our merit. We cannot help ourselves.

Jane Austen
She hoped to be wise and reasonable in time; but alas! Alas! She must confess to herself that she was not wise yet.

Jane Austen
To look almost pretty is an acquisition of higher delight to a girl who has been looking plain for the first fifteen years of her life than a beauty from her cradle can ever receive.

Jane Austen
Where people wish to attach, they should always be ignorant. To come with a well-informed mind, is to come with an inability of administering to the vanity of others, which a sensible person would always wish to avoid. A woman especially, if she have the misfortune of knowing any thing, should conceal it as well as she can.

Jane Austen
And from the whole she deduced this useful lesson, that to go previously engaged to a ball, does not necessarily increase either the dignity or enjoyment of a young lady.

Jane Austen
But when a young lady is to be a heroine, the perverseness of forty surrounding families cannot prevent her. Something must and will happen to throw a hero in her way.

Jane Austen
In every power, of which taste is the foundation, excellence is pretty fairly divided between the sexes.

Jane Austen
Dress is at all times a frivolous distinction, and excessive solicitude about it often destroys its own aim.

Jane Austen
It would be most right, and most wise, and, therefore must involve least suffering.

Jane Austen
Unjust I may have been, weak and resentful I have been, but never inconstant.

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

Jane Austen
I do regard her as one who is too modest for the world in general to be aware of half her accomplishments, and too highly accomplished for modesty to be natural of any other woman.

Jane Austen
Here and there, human nature may be great in times of trial, but generally speaking it is its weakness and not its strength that appears in a sick chamber; it is selfishness and impatience rather than generosity and fortitude, that one hears of. There is so little real friendship in the world! – and unfortunately' (speaking low and tremulously) 'there are so many who forget to think seriously till it is almost too late.

Jane Austen
"Only a novel"... in short, only some work in which the greatest powers of the mind are displayed, in which the most thorough knowledge of human nature, the happiest delineation of its varieties, the liveliest effusions of wit and humor are conveyed to the world in the best chosen language.

Jane Austen
If adventures will not befall a young lady in her own village, she must seek them abroad.

Jane Austen
No young lady can be justified in falling in love before the gentleman's love is declared, it must be very improper that a young lady should dream of a gentleman before the gentleman is first known to have dreamt of her.

Jane Austen
There is nothing I would not do for those who are really my friends. I have no notion of loving people by halves, it is not my nature.

Jane Austen
But there are some situations of the human mind in which good sense has very little power...

Jane Austen
The stream is as good as at first; the little rubbish it collects in the turnings is easily moved away.

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

Jane Austen
It is this delightful habit of journalizing which largely contributes to form the easy style of writing for which ladies are so generally celebrated. Every body allows that the talent of writing is particularly female. Nature might have done something, but I am sure it must be essentially assisted by the practice of keeping a journal.

Jane Austen
You... may perhaps be brought to acknowledge that it is very well worthwhile to be tormented for two or three years of one's life, for the sake of being able to read all the rest of it.

Jane Austen
One half of her should not be always so much wiser than the other half…

Jane Austen
Ah, mother! How do you do?' said he, giving her a hearty shake of the hand; 'Where did you get that quiz of a hat? It makes you look like an old witch...' On his two younger sisters he then bestowed an equal portion of his fraternal tenderness, for he asked each of them how they did, and observed that they both looked very ugly.

Jane Austen