Jane Austen Quotes
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A single woman with a narrow income must be a ridiculous, disagreeable old maid, the proper sport of boys and girls, but a single woman of fortune is always respectable, and may be as sensible and pleasant as anybody else.
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Her own thoughts and reflections were habitually her best companions.
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Our little visitor has just left us, and left us highly pleased with her; she is a nice, natural, open-hearted, affectionate girl, with all the ready civility which one sees in the best children in the present day; so unlike anything that I was myself at her age, that I am often all astonishment and shame.
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I lay it down as a general rule, Harriet, that if a woman doubts as to whether she should accept a man or not, she certainly ought to refuse him.
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What should I do with your strong, manly, spirited sketches, full of variety and glow? How could I possibly join them on to the little bit (two inches wide) of ivory on which I work with so fine a brush, as produces little effect after much labour?
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One half of the world cannot understand the pleasures of the other.
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She had a lively, playful disposition that delighted in anything ridiculous.
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I am very much obliged to my dear little George for his message - 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.
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I am sorry to tell you that I am getting very extravagant, and spending all my money, and, what is worse for you, I have been spending yours too.
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I believe you [men] capable of everything great and good in your married lives. I believe you equal to every important exertion, and to every domestic forbearance, so long as - if I may be allowed the expression, so long as you have an object. I mean, while the woman you love lives, and lives for you. All the privilege I claim for my own sex (it is not a very enviable one, you need not covet it) is that of loving longest, when existence or when hope is gone.
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Not very good, I am afraid. But now really, do not you think Udolpho the nicest book in the world?" "The nicest—by which I suppose you mean the neatest. That must depend upon the binding.
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There could have been no two hearts so open, no tastes so similar, no feelings so in unison...
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Marianne was silent; it was impossible for her to say what she did not feel, however trivial the occasion.
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There is a stubbornness about me that never can bear to be frightened at the will of others. My courage always rises at every attempt to intimidate me.
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I will be calm. I will be mistress of myself.
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Sophia shrieked and fainted on the ground-I screamed and instantly ran mad! We remained thus mutually deprived of our senses some minutes, and on regaining them were deprived of them again. For an hour and a quarter did we continue in this unfortunate situation.
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It does not appear to me that my hand is unworthy your acceptance, or that the establishment I can offer would be any other than highly desirable.
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If adventures will not befall a young lady in her own village, she must seek them abroad.
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You deserve a longer letter than this; but it is my unhappy fate seldom to treat people so well as they deserve.
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It was absolutely necessary to interrupt him now.
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It was, perhaps, one of those cases in which advice is good or bad only as the event decides.
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I read it [history] a little as a duty, but it tells me nothing that does not either vex or weary me. The quarrels of popes and kings, with wars or pestilences, in every page; the men all so good for nothing, and hardly any women at all — it is very tiresome: and yet I often think it odd that it should be so dull, for a great deal of it must be invention.
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I trust that absolutes have gradations.
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Wickedness is always wickedness, but folly is not always folly.