Jane Austen Quotes
-
You either choose this method of passing the evening because you are in each other's confidence, and have secret affairs to discuss, or because you are conscious that your figures appear to the greatest advantage in walking;— if the first, I should be completely in your way, and if the second, I can admire you much better as I sit by the fire.
-
No: the years which had destroyed her youth and bloom had only given him a more glowing, manly, open look, in no respect lessening his personal advantages. She had seen the same Frederick Wentworth.
-
I can easily believe it. Women of that class have great opportunities, and if they are intelligent may be well worth listening to. Such varieites of human nature as they are in the habit of witnessing! And it is not merely in its follies, that they are read; for they see it occasionally under every circumstance that can be most interesting or affecting. What instances must pass before them of ardent, disinterested, self-denying attachment, of heroism, fortitude, patience, resignation-- of all the sacrifices that ennoble us most. A sick chamber may often furnish the worth of volumes.
-
Told herself likewise not to hope. But it was too late. Hope had already entered.
-
We have all a better guide in ourselves, if we would attend to it, than any other person can be.
-
I am fond of history and am very well contented to take the false with the true. In the principal facts they have sources of intelligence in former histories and records, which may be as much depended on, I conclude, as anything that does not actually pass under ones own observation; and as for the little embellishments you speak of, they are embellishments, and I like them as such.
-
Real solemn history, I cannot be interested in.... The quarrels of popes and kings, with wars and pestilences in every page; the men all so good for nothing, and hardly any women at all.
-
Whom are you going to dance with?' asked Mr. Knightley. She hesitated a moment and then replied, 'With you, if you will ask me.' Will you?' said he, offering his hand. Indeed I will. You have shown that you can dance, and you know we are not really so much brother and sister as to make it at all improper.' Brother and sister! no, indeed.
-
The more I know of the world, the more I am convinced that I shall never see a man whom I can really love.
-
It is better to know as little as possible of the defects of the person with whom you are to pass your life.
-
I wish, as well as everybody else, to be perfectly happy; but, like everybody else, it must be in my own way.
-
Wisdom is better than wit, and in the long run will certainly have the laugh on her side.
-
You think me foolish to call instruction a torment, but if you had been as much used as myself to hear poor little children first learning their letters and then learning to spell, if you had ever seen how stupid they can be for a whole morning together, and how tired my poor mother is at the end of it, as I am in the habit of seeing almost every day of my life at home, you would allow that to torment and to instruct might sometimes be used as synonymous words.
-
Nothing ever fatigues me, but doing what I do not like.
-
To her own heart it was a delightful affair, to her imagination it was even a ridiculous one, but to her reason, her judgment, it was completely a puzzle.
-
You expect me to account for opinions which you choose to call mine, but which I have never acknowledged.
-
When once married people begin to attack me with, 'Oh! you will think very differently, when you are married,' I can only say, 'No I shall not'; and then they say again, 'Yes you will,' and there is an end to it.
-
Were I to fall in love, indeed, it would be a different thing! but I never have been in love; it is not my way, or my nature; and I do not think I ever shall.
-
What do you know of my heart? What do you know of anything but your own suffering. For weeks, Marianne, I've had this pressing on me without being at liberty to speak of it to a single creature. It was forced on me by the very person whose prior claims ruined all my hope. I have endured her exultations again and again whilst knowing myself to be divided from Edward forever. Believe me, Marianne, had I not been bound to silence I could have provided proof enough of a broken heart, even for you.
-
What strange creatures brothers are!
-
There are certainly not so many men of large fortune in the world, as there are pretty women to deserve them.
-
Every moment had its pleasure and its hope.
-
It is not every man's fate to marry the woman who loves him best...
-
To flatter and follow others, without being flattered and followed in turn, is but a state of half enjoyment.