Jane Austen Quotes
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What! Would I be turned back from doing a thing that I had determined to do, and that I knew to be right, by the airs and interference of such a person, or any person I may say? No, I have no idea of being so easily persuaded. When I have made up my mind, I have made it.
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I do not like to have people throw themselves away; but everybody should marry as soon as they can do it to advantage.
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I should infinitely prefer a book.
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...but for my own part, if a book is well written, I always find it too short.
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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.
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It sometimes happens that a woman is handsomer at twenty-nine than she was ten years before.
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It is this delightful habit of journalizing which largely contributes to form the easy style of writing for which ladies are so generally celebrated. Every body allows that the talent of writing is particularly female. Nature might have done something, but I am sure it must be essentially assisted by the practice of keeping a journal.
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Lady Middleton ... exerted herself to ask Mr. Palmer if there was any news in the paper. 'No, none at all,' he replied, and read on.
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...for he is such a disagreeable man, that it would be quite a misfortune to be liked by him.
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…she felt depressed beyond any thing she had ever known before.
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In a letter from Bath to her sister, Cassandra, one senses her frustration at her sheltered existence, Tuesday, 12 May 1801. Another stupid party . . . with six people to look on, and talk nonsense to each other.
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What one means one day, you know, one may not mean the next. Circumstances change, opinions alter.
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One has not great hopes from Birmingham. I always say there is something direful in the sound...
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Nobody can tell what I suffer! But it is always so. Those who do not complain are never pitied.
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But there are some situations of the human mind in which good sense has very little power.
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It's been many years since I had such an exemplary vegetable.
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if a woman doubts as to whether she should accept a man or not, she certainly ought to refuse him. If she can hesitate as to `Yes,' she ought to say `No' directly. It is not a state to be safely entered into with doubtful feelings, with half a heart.
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She tried to be calm, and leave things to take their course; and tried to dwell much on this argument of rational dependence – “Surely, if there be constant attachment on each side, our hearts must understand each other ere long. We are not boy and girl, to be captiously irritable, misled by every moment’s inadvertence, and wantonly playing with our own happiness.” And yet, a few minutes afterwards, she felt as if their being in company with each other, under their present circumstances, could only be exposing them to inadvertencies and misconstructions of the most mischievous kind.
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You are mistaken, Mr. Darcy, if you suppose that the mode of your declaration affected me in any other way, than as it spared the concern which I might have felt in refusing you, had you behaved in a more gentlemanlike manner.
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Nothing is more deceitful than the appearance of humility. It is often only carelessness of opinion, and sometimes an indirect boast.
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Now be sincere; did you admire me for my impertinence?" "For the liveliness of your mind, I did.
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The more I see of the world, the more am I dissatisfied with it.
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There, he had seen every thing to exalt in his estimation the woman he had lost, and there begun to deplore the pride, the folly, the madness of resentment, which had kept him from trying to regain her when thrown in his way.
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For what do we live, but to make sport by subjecting our neighbors to endless discretionary review for minor additions?