Quotes from Jane Austen

It's been many years since I had such an exemplary vegetable.

There was a monstrous deal of stupid quizzing and common-place nonsense talked, but scarcely any wit.

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.

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.

One cannot have too large a party.

He is a gentleman, and I am a gentleman's daughter. So far we are equal.

James Digweed left Hampshire today. I think he must be in love with you, from his anxiety to have you go to the Faversham Balls & likewise from his supposing that the two Elms fell from their grief at your absence. Was it not a galant idea? It never occurred to me before, but I dare say it was so.

There are such beings in the world -- perhaps one in a thousand -- as the creature you and I should think perfection; where grace and spirit are united to worth, where the manners are equal to the heart and understanding; but such a person may not come in your way, or, if he does, he may not be the eldest son of a man of fortune, the near relation of your particular friend, and belonging to your own county.

No man is offended by another man's admiration of the woman he loves; it is the woman only who can make it a torment.

It would be mortifying to the feelings of many ladies, could they be made to understand how little the heart of a man is affected by what is costly or new in their attire.

If one scheme of happiness fails, human nature turns to another; if the first calculation is wrong, we make a second better: we find comfort somewhere.

Next week I shall begin my operations on my hat, on which you know my principal hopes of happiness depend.

Single women have a dreadful propensity for being poor, which is one very strong argument in favour of matrimony.

I could not sit seriously down to write a serious romance under any other motive than to save my life; and if it were indispensable for me to keep it up and never relax into laughing at myself or other people, I am sure I should be hung before I had finished the first chapter. No, I must keep to my own style and go on in my own way; and though I may never succeed again in that, I am convinced that I should totally fail in any other.

I am very much obliged to my dear little George for his messages, for his Love at least--his Duty I suppose was only in consequence of some hint of my favourable intentions towards him from his father or mother. I am sincerely rejoiced however that I ever was born, since it has been the means of procuring him a dish of Tea.

I have made myself two or three caps to wear of evenings since I came home, and they save me a world of torment as to hair-dressing, which at present gives me no trouble beyond washing and brushing, for my long hair is always plaited up out of sight, and my short hair curls well enough to want no papering.

A scheme of which every part promises delight, can never be successful; and general disappointment is only warded off by the defense of some little peculiar vexation.

It must be very improper that a young lady should dream of a gentleman before the gentleman is first known to have dreamt of her.

Let us leave it to the reviewers to abuse such effusions of fancy at their leisure, and over every new novel to talk in threadbare strains of the trash with which the press now groans. Let us not desert one another; we are an injured body.

I can recollect nothing more to say at present; perhaps breakfast may assist my ideas. I was deceived -- my breakfast supplied only two ideas -- that the rolls were good and the butter bad.

We live entirely in the dressing room now, which I like very much; I always feel so much more elegant in it than in the parlour.

Expect a most agreeable letter; for not being overburdened with subject (having nothing at all to say) I shall have no check to my Genius from beginning to end.

People themselves alter so much, that there is something new to be observed in them for ever.

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