Quotes from Jane Austen

When I have a house of my own, I shall be miserable if I have not an excellent library.

The youth and cheerfulness of morning are in happy analogy, and of powerful operation; and if the distress be not poignant enough to keep the eyes unclosed, they will be sure to open to sensations of softened pain and brighter hope.

What are men compared to rocks and trees?

Oh! you are a great deal too apt, you know, to like people in general. You never see fault in any body. All the world are good and agreeable in your eyes. I never heard you speak ill of a human being in my life. I would wish not to be hasty in censuring any one; but I always speak what I think.

She hardly knew how to suppose that she could be an object of admiration to so great a man.

How pleasant it is to spend an evening in this way! I declare after all there is no enjoyment like reading! How much sooner one tires of anything than of a book! When I have a house of my own, I shall be miserable if I have not an excellent library.

A very narrow income has a tendency to contract the mind, and sour the temper. Those who can barely live, and who live perforce in a very small, and generally very inferior, society, may well be illiberal and cross.

He may live in my memory as the most amiable man of my acquaintance..

Single women have a dreadful propensity for being poor...which is one very strong argument in favour of matrimony... Quote from a Jane Austen Letter 13 March, 1817

You want to tell me, and I have no objection to hearing it.

You men have none of you any hearts.' 'If we have not hearts, we have eyes; and they give us torment enough.

But he recommended the books which charmed her leisure hours, he encouraged her taste, and corrected her judgment; he made reading useful by talking to her of what she read, and heightened its attraction by judicious praise.

Sometimes the last person on earth you want to be with is the one person you can't be without.

The loss of virtue in a female is irretrievable - that one false step involves in her endless ruin - that her reputation is no less brittle than it is beautiful - and that she cannot be too much guarded in her behavior towards the undeserving of the opposite sex.

Your conjecture is totally wrong, I assure you. My mind was more agreeably engaged. I have been meditating on the very great pleasure which a pair of fine eyes in the face of a pretty women can bestow. Mr. Darcy

We must live and learn.

Perfect happiness, even in memory, is not common.

Where the wound had been given, there must the cure be found, if any where.

she was oppressed, she was overcome by her own felicity; and happily disposed as is the human mind to be easily familiarized with any change for the better, it required several hours to give sedateness to her spirits, or any degree of tranquillity to her heart.

No, no, cried Marianne, misery such as mine has no pride. I care not who knows that I am wretched. The triumph of seeing me so may be open to all the world. Elinor, Elinor, they who suffer little may be proud and independent as they like-may resist insult, or return mortification-but I cannot. I must feel-I must be wretched-and they are welcome to enjoy the consciousness of it that can.

It was for the sake of what had been, rather than what was.

Every body allows that the talent of writing agreeable letters is peculiarly female.

The past, present, and future, were all equally in gloom.

It is your turn to say something now, Mr. Darcy. I talked about the dance, and you ought to make some kind of remark on the size of the room, or the number of couples.