Jane Austen Quotes
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I am determined that only the deepest love will induce me into matrimony. So... I shall end an old maid, and teach your ten children to embroider cushions and play their instruments very ill.
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To love is to burn, to be on fire.
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...from politics, it was an easy step to silence.
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I understand Crawford paid you a visit?" "Yes." "And was he attentive?" "Yes, very." "And has your heart changed towards him?" "Yes. Several times. I have - I find that I - I find that-" "Shh. Surely you and I are beyond speaking when words are clearly not enough.... I missed you." "And I you.
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Without thinking highly either of men or of matrimony, marriage had always been her object; it was the only honourable provision for well-educated young women of small fortune, and however uncertain of giving happiness, must be their pleasantest preservative from want.
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There is no reason in the world why you should not be important where you are known. You have good sense, and a sweet temper, and I am sure you have a grateful heart, that could never receive kindness without hoping to return it. I do not know any better qualifications for a friend and companion.
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A woman, especially if she has the misfortune of knowing anything, should conceal it as well as she can.
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She is loveliness itself.
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If gratitude and esteem are good foundations of affection, Elizabeth's change of sentiment will be neither improbable nor faulty. But if otherwise--if regard springing from such sources is unreasonable or unnatural, in comparison of what is so often described as arising on a first interview with its object, and even before two words have been exchanged, nothing can be said in her defence, except that she had given somewhat of a trial to the latter method in her partiality for Wickham, and that its ill success might, perhaps, authorise her to seek the other less interesting mode of attachment.
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May I ask you what these questions tend?' 'Merely to the illustration of your character,' said she, endeavouring to shake off her gravity. 'I am trying to make it out.' 'And what is your success?' She shook her head. 'I do not get on at all. I hear such different accounts of you as puzzle me exceedingly.
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Self-knowledge is the first step to maturity.
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You know how interesting the purchase of a sponge-cake is to me.
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If I could not be persuaded into doing what I thought wrong, I never will be tricked into it.
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How wonderful, how very wonderful the operations of time, and the changes of the human mind!
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I am certainly the most fortunate creature that ever existed!
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Sometimes the last person on earth you want to be with is the one person you can't be without.
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I give you joy of our new nephew, and hope if he ever comes to be hanged it will not be till we are too old to care about it.
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When the evening was over, Anne could not be amused…nor could she help fearing, on more serious reflection, that, like many other great moralists and preachers, she had been eloquent on a point in which her own conduct would ill bear examination.
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Teach us almighty father, to consider this solemn truth, as we should do, that we may feel the importance of every day, and every hour as it passes.
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Let me know when you begin the new tea, and the new white wine. My present elegancies have not yet made me indifferent to such matters. I am still a cat if I see a mouse.
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A Woman never looks better than on horseback...
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But it is very foolish to ask questions about any young ladies — about any three sisters just grown up; for one knows, without being told, exactly what they are — all very accomplished and pleasing, and one very pretty. There is a beauty in every family. — It is a regular thing...
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It is only a novel... or, in short, only some work in which the greatest powers of the mind are displayed, in which the most thorough knowledge of human nature, the happiest delineation of its varieties, the liveliest effusions of wit and humour, are conveyed to the world in the best-chosen language
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There is, I believe, in every disposition a tendency to some particular evil, a natural defect, which not even the best education can overcome." "And your defect is a propensity to hate everybody." "And yours," he replied with a smile, "is wilfully to misunderstand them.