Best Jane Austen Quotes

In nine cases out of ten, a woman had better show more affection than she feels.

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man is in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.

It is always incomprehensible to a man that a woman should ever refuse an offer of marriage.

Every man is surrounded by a neighborhood of voluntary spies.

For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbors, and laugh at them in our turn?

Where an opinion is general, it is usually correct.

You mistake me, my dear. I have a high respect for your nerves. They are my old friends. I have heard you mention them with consideration these twenty years at least.

Those who do not complain are never pitied.

To sit in the shade on a fine day, and look upon verdure is the most perfect refreshment.

Business, you know, may bring you money, but friendship hardly ever does.

Seldom, very seldom, does complete truth belong to any human disclosure; seldom can it happen that something is not a little disguised, or a little mistaken.

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

There are certainly are not so many men of large fortune in the world as there are of pretty woman to deserve them.

With men he can be rational and unaffected, but when he has ladies to please, every feature works.

Happiness in marriage is entirely a matter of chance.

Human nature is so well disposed towards those who are in interesting situations, that a young person, who either marries or dies, is sure of being kindly spoken of.

A large income is the best recipe for happiness I ever heard of.

Although our productions have afforded more extensive and unaffected pleasure than those of any other literary corporation in the world, no species of composition has been so much decried. And what are you reading, Miss -- -? Oh! it is only a novel! replies the young lady; while she lays down her book with affected indifference, or momentary shame. It is only Cecilia, or Camilla, or Belinda ; or, 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.

Why not seize the pleasure at once? How often is happiness destroyed by preparation, foolish preparation.

Nobody can tell what I suffer! But it is always so. Those who do not complain are never pitied.

It may be possible to do without dancing entirely. Instances have been known of young people passing many, many months successively without being at any ball of any description, and no material injury accrue either to body or mind; but when a beginning is made -- when the felicities of rapid motion have once been, though slightly, felt -- it must be a very heavy set that does not ask for more.

One has not great hopes from Birmingham. I always say there is something direful in the sound.

We do not look in our great cities for our best morality.

It will, I believe, be everywhere found, that as the clergy are, or are not what they ought to be, so are the rest of the nation.

It is indolence... Indolence and love of ease; a want of all laudable ambition, of taste for good company, or of inclination to take the trouble of being agreeable, which make men clergymen. A clergyman has nothing to do but be slovenly and selfish; read the newspaper, watch the weather, and quarrel with his wife. His curate does all the work and the business of his own life is to dine.

I am afraid that the pleasantness of an employment does not always evince its propriety.

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.

Single women have a dreadful propensity for being poor. Which is one very strong argument in favor of matrimony.

What dreadful hot weather we have! It keeps me in a continual state of inelegance.

Surprises are foolish things. The pleasure is not enhanced and the inconvenience is often considerable.

From politics it was an easy step to silence.

One cannot be always laughing at a man without now and then stumbling on something witty.

There is safety in reserve, but no attraction. One cannot love a reserved person.

One half of the world cannot understand the pleasures of the other.

One does not love a place the less for having suffered in it, unless it has been all suffering, nothing but suffering.

An engaged woman is always more agreeable than a disengaged. She is satisfied with herself. Her cares are over, and she feels that she may exert all her powers of pleasing without suspicion. All is safe with a lady engaged; no harm can be done.