Quotes from Jane Austen

Yes, replied Darcy, who could contain himself no longer, but that was when I first knew her; for it is many months since I have considered her as one of the handsomest women of my acquaintance.

And have you never known the pleasure and triumph of a lucky guess? I pity you. I thought you cleverer; for depend upon it, a lucky guess is never merely luck. There is always some talent in it.

my good qualities are under your protection, and you are to exaggerate them as much as possible; and, in return, it belongs to me to find occasion for teasing and quarreling with you as often as may be...

Nobody, who has not been in the interior of a family, can say what the difficulties of any individual of that family may be.

Heaven forbid! -- That would be the greatest misfortune of all! -- To find a man agreeable whom one is determined to hate! -- Do not wish me such an evil.

I am happier than Jane; she only smiles, I laugh. Mr. Darcy sends you all the love in the world, that he can spare from me.

the more I know of the world, the more I am convinced that I shall never see a man whom I can really love.

I do suspect that he is not really necessary to my happiness.

I can listen no longer in silence. I must speak to you by such means as are within my reach. You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope. Tell me not that I am too late, that such precious feelings are gone for ever. I offer myself to you again with a heart even more your own than when you almost broke it, eight years and a half ago. Dare not say that man forgets sooner than woman, that his love has an earlier death. I have loved none but you.

It was a delightful visit;-perfect, in being much too short.

You have bewitched me, body and soul, and I love you

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.

There are very few who have heart enough to be really in love without encouragement

To love is to burn, to be on fire.

Every man is surrounded by a neighborhood of voluntary spies.

A woman is not to marry a man merely because she is asked, or because he is attached to her, and can write a tolerable letter.

My object then, replied Darcy, was to show you, by every civility in my power, that I was not so mean as to resent the past; and I hoped to obtain your forgiveness, to lessen your ill opinion, by letting you see that your reproofs had been attended to. How soon any other wishes introduced themselves I can hardly tell, but I believe in about half an hour after I had seen you.

It is particularly incumbent on those who never change their opinion, to be secure of judging properly at first.

My ideas flow so rapidly that I have not time to express them??by which means my letters sometimes convey no ideas at all to my correspondents.

Of course I love her, but there are as many forms of love as there are moments in time.

Yes, I found myself, by insensible degrees, sincerely fond of her; and the happiest hours of my life were what I spent with her.

The most incomprehensible thing in the world to a man, is a woman who rejects his offer of marriage!

She mediated, by turns, on broken promises and broken arches, phaetons and false hangings, Tilneys and trap-doors.

Had Elizabeth been able to encounter his eye, she might have seen how well the expression of heartfelt delight, diffused over his face, became him; but, though she could not look, she could listen, and he told her of feelings, which, in proving of what importance she was to him, made his affection every moment more valuable.