Jane Austen Quotes
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Walter Scott has no business to write novels, especially good ones. He has fame and profit enough as a poet, and should not be taking the bread out of other people's mouths.
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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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I do assure you, Sir, that I have no pretension whatever of that kind of elegance which consists in tormenting a respectable man. I would rather be paid the compliment of being believed sincere. I thank you again and again for the honour you have done me in your proposals, but to accept them is absolutely impossible. My feelings in every respect forbid it. Can I speak plainer? Do not consider me now as an elegant female intending to plague you, but as a rational creature speaking the truth from her heart.
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It is a lovely night, and they are much to be pitied who have not been taught to feel, in some degree, as you do; who have not, at least, been given a taste for Nature in early life. They lose a great deal.
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A man . . . must have a very good opinion of himself when he asks people to leave their own fireside, and encounter such a day as this, for the sake of coming to see him. He must think himself a most agreeable fellow.
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Business, you know, may bring money, but friendship hardly ever does.
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...the Musgroves had had the ill fortune of a very troublesome, hopeless son, and the good fortune to lose him before he reached his twentieth year.
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Elizabeth had never been more at a loss to make her feelings appear what they were not. It was necessary to laugh, when she would rather have cried.
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She was humbled, she was grieved; she repented, though she hardly knew of what. She became jealous of his esteem, when she could no longer hope to be benefited by it. She wanted to hear of him, when there seemed the least chance of gaining intelligence. She was convinced that she could have been happy with him, when it was no longer likely they should meet.
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Full many a flower is born to blush unseen, And waste its fragrance on the desert air.
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I have been meditating on the very great pleasure which a pair of fine eyes in the face of a pretty woman can bestow.
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Beware how you give your heart.
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I never wish to offend, but I am so foolishly shy, that I often seem negligent, when I am only kept back by my natural awkwardness ... Shyness is only the effect of a sense of inferiority in some way or other. If I could persuade myself that my manners were perfectly easy and graceful, I should not be shy.
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I am happier than Jane; she only smiles, I laugh. Mr. Darcy sends you all the love in the world, that he can spare from me.
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A mind lively and at ease, can do with seeing nothing, and can see nothing that does not answer.
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How horrible it is to have so many people killed! And what a blessing that one cares for none of them!
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I assure you. I have no notion of treating men with such respect. That is the way to spoil them.
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I will not adopt that ungenerous and impolitic custom so common with novel writers, of degrading by their contemptuous censure the very performances, to the number of which they are themselves adding?joining with their greatest enemies in bestowing the harshest epithets on such works, and scarcely ever permitting them to be read by their own heroine, who, if she accidentally take up a novel, is sure to turn over its insipid leaves with disgust.
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Give a girl an education and introduce her properly into the world, and ten to one but she has the means of settling well, without further expense to anybody.
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My good opinion once lost is lost forever.
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it will, I believe, be everywhere found, that as the clergy are, or are not what they ought to be, so are the rest of the nation.
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She would tell you herself that she has a very dreadful cold in her head at present; but I have not much compassion for colds in the head without fever or sore throat.
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Oh! write, write. Finish it at once. Let there be an end of this suspense. Fix, commit, condemn yourself.
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There seems almost a general wish of descrying the capacity and undervaluing the labour of the novelist, and of slighting the performances which have only genius, wit, and taste to recommend them.