Quotes from Jane Austen

Elizabeth Bennet: And that put paid to it. I wonder who first discovered the power of poetry in driving away love? Mr. Darcy: I thought that poetry was the food of love. Elizabeth Bennet: Of a fine stout love, it may. But if it is only a vague inclination I'm convinced one poor sonnet will kill it stone dead Mr. Darcy: So what do you recommend to encourage affection? Elizabeth Bennet: Dancing. Even if one's partner is barely tolerable.

I never could be so happy as you. Till I have your disposition, your goodness, I never can have your happiness.

It is such a happiness when good people get together -- and they always do.

Every impulse of feeling should be guided by reason; and, in my opinion, exertion should always be in proportion to what is required.

Did not you? I did for you. But that is one great difference between us. Compliments always take you by surprise, and me never.

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.

A family of ten children will be always called a fine family, where there are heads and arms and legs enough for the number.

Teach us...... that we may feel the importance of every day, of every hour, as it passes.

I have frequently detected myself in such kind of mistakes... in a total misapprehension of character at some point or other: fancying people so much more gay or grave, or ingenious or stupid than they really are, and I can hardly tell why, or in what the deception originated. Sometimes one is guided by what other people say of them, without giving oneself time to deliberate and judge.

A mother would have been always present. A mother would have been a constant friend; her influence would have been beyond all other.

You showed me how insufficient were all my pretensions to please a woman worthy of being pleased.

Happiness in marriage is entirely a matter of chance.

I have no notion of loving people by halves, it is not my nature. My attachments are always excessively strong.

Marry me. Marry me, my wonderful, darling friend.

never could I expect to be so truly beloved and important; so always first and always right in any man's eyes as I am in my father's...

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.

I do think that men can forget a lost love quickly. I know that women would find it much harder.

Fanny spoke her feelings. Here's harmony! said she; here's repose! Here's what may leave all painting and all music behind, and what may tranquillise every care, and lift the heart to rapture! When I look out on such a night as this, I feel as if there could be neither wickedness nor sorrow in the world; and there certainly would be less of both if the sublimity of Nature were more attended to, and people were carried more out of themselves by contemplating such a scene.

The ladies here probably exchanged looks which meant, 'Men never know when things are dirty or not;' and the gentlemen perhaps thought each to himself, 'Women will have their little nonsense and needless cares.

She is tolerable; but not handsome enough to tempt me; I am in no humour at present to give consequence to young ladies who are slighted by other men. You had better return to your partner and enjoy her smiles, for you are wasting your time with me.

She was without any power, because she was without any desire of command over herself.

To be sure you know no actual good of me, but nobody thinks of that when they fall in love.

A man always imagines a woman to be ready for anybody who asks her.

And Marianne, who had the knack of finding her way in every house to the library, however it might be avoided by the family in general, soon procured herself a book.