Jane Austen - Persuasion (1816)

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'My idea of good company, Mr Elliot, is the company of clever, well-informed people, who have a great deal of conversation; that is what I call good company.' 'You are mistaken,' said he gently, 'that is not good company, that is the best.'

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
A Mr. (save, perhaps, some half dozen in the nation,) always needs a note of explanation.

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
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
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
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
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
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
Give me but a little cheerful company, let me only have the company of the people I love, let me only be where I like and with whom I like, and the devil may take the rest, say I.

Jane Austen
The Musgroves had had the ill fortune of a very troublesome, hopeless son, and the good fortune to lose him before he reached his twentieth year.

Jane Austen
Not very good, I am afraid. But now really, do not you think Udolpho the nicest book in the world?" "The nicest—by which I suppose you mean the neatest. That must depend upon the binding.

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

Jane Austen
No man is offended by another man's admiration of the woman he loves; it is the woman only who can make it a torment.

Jane Austen
She knew that when she played she was giving pleasure only to herself; but this was no new sensation

Jane Austen
Now they were as strangers; nay worse than strangers, for they could never become acquainted.

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

Jane Austen
Miss Morland, no one can think more highly of the understanding of women than I do. In my opinion, nature has given them so much, that they never find it necessary to use more than half.

Jane Austen
No one who had ever seen Catherine Morland in her infancy, would have supposed her born to be a heroine... But from fifteen to seventeen she was in training for a heroine...

Jane Austen
Sir Walter Elliot, of Kellynch-hall, in Somersetshire, was a man who, for his own amusement, never took up any book but the Baronetage; there he found occupation for an idle hour, and consolation in a distressed one.

Jane Austen
She was sensible and clever, but eager in everything; her sorrows, her joys, could have no moderation.

Jane Austen
I assure you. I have no notion of treating men with such respect. That is the way to spoil them.

Jane Austen
If the heroine of one novel be not patronized by the heroine of another, from whom can she expect protection and regard?

Jane Austen
But Catherine did not know her own advantages - did not know that a good-looking girl, with an affectionate heart and a very ignorant mind, cannot fail of attracting a clever young man, unless circumstances are particularly untoward.

Jane Austen
It would be difficult to say which had seen highest perfection in the other, or which had been the happiest: she, in receiving his declarations and proposals, or he in having them accepted.

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

Jane Austen
Your countenance perfectly informs me that you were in company last night with the person, whom you think the most agreeable in the world, the person who interests you at this present time, more than all the rest of the world put together.

Jane Austen
To flatter and follow others, without being flattered and followed in turn, is but a state of half enjoyment.

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