Quotes from Jane Austen

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

Know your own happiness.

Good apple pies are a considerable part of our domestic happiness.

I am only resolved to act in that manner, which will, in my own opinion, constitute my happiness, without reference to you, or to any person so wholly unconnected with me.

Such a letter was not to be soon recovered from. . . . Every moment rather brought fresh agitation. It was an overpowering happiness.

I mean to be too rich to lament or to feel anything of the sort. A large income is the best recipe for happiness I ever heard of. It certainly may secure all the myrtle and turkey part of it.

Perfect happiness, even in memory, is not common.

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

To begin perfect happiness at the respective ages of 26 and 18 is to do pretty well.

Portable property is happiness in a pocketbook.

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

That sanguine expectation of happiness which is happiness itself.

Young ladies should take care of themselves. Young ladies are delicate plants. They should take care of their health and their complexion. My dear, did you change your stockings?

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

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

Nothing was so likely to do her good as a little quiet cheerfulness at home.

Every moment had its pleasure and its hope.

It taught me to hope, as I had scarcely ever allowed myself to hope before.

Told herself likewise not to hope. But it was too late. Hope had already entered.

It was a gloomy prospect, and all that she could do was to throw a mist over it, and hope when the mist cleared away, she should see something else.

Let no one presume to give the feelings of a young woman on receiving the assurance of that affection of which she has scarcely allowed herself to entertain a hope.

She knew that what Marianne and her mother conjectured one moment, they believed the next: that with them, to wish was to hope, and to hope was to expect.

And pictures of perfection, as you know, make me sick and wicked.

Stupid men are the only ones worth knowing after all.