-
I am come, young ladies, in a very moralizing strain, to observe that our pleasures of this world are always to be for, and that we often purchase them at a great disadvantage, giving readi-monied actual happiness for a draft on the future, that may not be honoured.
Jane Austen
-
Everybody has their taste in noises as well as in other matters.
Jane Austen
-
For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbors and laugh at them in our turn?
Jane Austen
-
Here and there, human nature may be great in times of trial, but generally speaking it is its weakness and not its strength that appears in a sick chamber; it is selfishness and impatience rather than generosity and fortitude, that one hears of. There is so little real friendship in the world! – and unfortunately' (speaking low and tremulously) 'there are so many who forget to think seriously till it is almost too late.
Jane Austen
-
I certainly must,' said she. 'This sensation of listlessness, weariness, stupidity, this disinclination to sit down and employ myself, this feeling of everything's being dull and insipid about the house! I must be in love; I should be the oddest creature in the world if I were not.
Jane Austen
-
Know your own happiness. You want nothing but patience- or give it a more fascinating name, call it hope.
Jane Austen
-
Brandon is just the kind of man whom every body speaks well of, and nobody cares about; whom all are delighted to see, and nobody remembers to talk to.
Jane Austen
-
Without music, life would be a blank to me.
Jane Austen
-
Mrs. Jennings was a widow, with an ample jointure. She had only two daughters, both of whom she had lived to see respectably married, and she had now therefore nothing to do but to marry all the rest of the world.
Jane Austen
-
If I had ever learnt, I should have been a great proficient.
Jane Austen
-
Her pleasure in the walk must arise from the exercise and the day, from the view of the last smiles of the year upon the tawny leaves and withered hedges, and from repeating to herself some few of the thousand poetical descriptions extant of autumn-that season of peculiar and inexhaustible influence on the mind of taste and tenderness-that season which has drawn from every poet worthy of being read some attempt at description, or some lines of feeling.
Jane Austen
-
My object then," replied Darcy, "was to show you, by every civility in my power, that I was not so mean as to resent the past; and I hoped to obtain your forgiveness, to lessen your ill opinion, by letting you see that your reproofs had been attended to. How soon any other wishes introduced themselves I can hardly tell, but I believe in about half an hour after I had seen you.
Jane Austen
-
The more I see of the world, the more am I dissatisfied with it.
Jane Austen
-
But Catherine did not know her own advantages - did not know that a good-looking girl, with an affectionate heart and a very ignorant mind, cannot fail of attracting a clever young man, unless circumstances are particularly untoward.
Jane Austen
-
I wish I might take this for a compliment; but to be so easily seen through I am afraid is pitiful.
Jane Austen
-
We live at home, quiet, confined, and our feelings prey upon us.
Jane Austen
-
We have been exceedingly busy ever since you went away. In the first place we have had to rejoice two or three times everyday at your having such very delightful weather for the whole of your journey...
Jane Austen
-
Fortunately for those who pay their court through such foibles, a fond mother, though, in pursuit of praise for her children, the most rapacious of human beings, is likewise the most credulous; her demands are exorbitant; but she will swallow any thing.
Jane Austen
-
The evergreen! How beautiful, how welcome, how wonderful the evergreen! When one thinks of it, how astonishing a variety of nature! In some countries we know that the tree that sheds its leaf is the variety, but that does not make it less amazing, that the same soil and the same sun should nurture plants differing in the first rule and law of their existence.
Jane Austen
-
Your abuse of our gowns amuses but does not discourage me; I shall take mine to be made up next week, and the more I look at it the better it pleases me. My cloak came on Tuesday, and, though I expected a good deal, the beauty of the lace astonished me. It is too handsome to be worn - almost too handsome to be looked at.
Jane Austen
-
Well, my comfort is, I am sure Jane will die of a broken heart, and then he will be sorry for what he has done.
Jane Austen
-
If any young men come for Mary or Kitty, send them in, for I am quite as leisure.
Jane Austen
-
I leave it to be settled, by whomsoever it may concern, whether the tendency of this work be altogether to recommend parental tyranny, or reward filial disobedience.
Jane Austen
-
He seems a very harmless sort of young man, nothing to like or dislike in him - goes out shooting or hunting with the two others all the morning, and plays at whist and makes queer faces in the evening.
Jane Austen
