Jane Austen Quotes

the only source whence any thing like consolation or composure could be drawn, was in the resolution of her own better conduct, and the hope that, however inferior in spirit and gaiety might be the following and every future winter of her life to the past, it would yet find her more rational, more acquainted with herself, and leave her less to regret when it were gone.

~ Jane Austen

I do not play this instrument so well as I should wish to, but I have always supposed that to be my own fault because I would not take the trouble of practicing.

~ Jane Austen

The past, present, and future, were all equally in gloom.

~ Jane Austen

Oh! Do not attack me with your watch. A watch is always too fast or too slow. I cannot be dictated to by a watch.

~ Jane Austen

I could not be happy with a man whose taste did not in every point coincide with my own. He must enter in all my feelings; the same books, the same music must charm us both.

~ Jane Austen

Nobody could catch cold by the sea; nobody wanted appetite by the sea; nobody wanted spirits; nobody wanted strength. Sea air was healing, softening, relaxing -- fortifying and bracing -- seemingly just as was wanted -- sometimes one, sometimes the other. If the sea breeze failed, the seabath was the certain corrective; and where bathing disagreed, the sea air alone was evidently designed by nature for the cure.

~ Jane Austen

There are people who, the more you do for them, the less they will do for themseselves.

~ Jane Austen

It's a truth universally acknowledged...

~ Jane Austen

If I understand you rightly, you had formed a surmise of such horror as I have hardly words to-- Dear Miss Morland, consider the dreadful nature of the suspicions you have entertained. What have you been judging from? Remember the country and the age in which we live. Remember that we are English, that we are Christians. Consult your own understanding, your own sense of the probable, your own observation of what is passing around you. Does our education prepare us for such atrocities? Do our laws connive at them? Could they be perpetrated without being known, in a country like this, where social and literary intercourse is on such a footing, where every man is surrounded by a neighbourhood of voluntary spies, and where roads and newspapers lay everything open? Dearest Miss Morland, what ideas have you been admitting?They had reached the end of the gallery, and with tears of shame she ran off to her own room.

~ Jane Austen

She wished such words unsaid with all her heart

~ Jane Austen

…she felt depressed beyond any thing she had ever known before.

~ Jane Austen

In such moments of precious, invaluable misery, she rejoiced in tears of agony...

~ Jane Austen

If, however, I am allowed to think that you and yours feel an interest in my fate and actions, it may be the means—it may put me on my guard—at least, it may be something to live for.

~ Jane Austen

Marianne had now been brought by degrees, so much into the habit of going out every day, that it was become a matter of indifference to her, whether she went or not: and she prepared quietly and mechanically for every evening's engagement, though without expecting the smallest amusement from any, and very often without knowing, till the last moment, where it was to take her.

~ Jane Austen

An interval of meditation, serious and grateful, was the best corrective of everything dangerous.

~ Jane Austen

Trusting that you will some time or other do me greater justice than you can do now.

~ Jane Austen

I could easily forgive his pride, if he had not mortified mine.

~ Jane Austen

I am now convinced that I have never been much in love; for had I really experienced that pure and elevating passion, I should at present detest his very name, and wish him all manner of evil. But my feelings are not only cordial towards him; they are even impartial towards her. I cannot find out that I hate her at all, or that I am in the least unwilling to think her a very good sort of girl. There can be no love in all this.

~ Jane Austen

His departure gave Catherine the first experimental conviction that a loss may be sometimes a gain.

~ Jane Austen

A loss may be sometimes a gain.

~ Jane Austen

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.

~ Jane Austen

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 – Sophia fainting every moment and I running mad as often. At length a groan from the hapless Edward (who alone retained any share of life) restored us to ourselves.

~ Jane Austen

Dear Eloisa (said I) there’s no occasion for your crying so much about such a trifle. (for I was willing to make light of it in order to comfort her) I beg you would not mind it – You see it does not vex me in the least; though perhaps I may suffer most from it after all; for I shall not only be obliged to eat up all the Victuals I have dressed already, but must if Henry should recover (which however is not very likely) dress as much for you again; or should he die (as I suppose he will) I shall still have to prepare a Dinner for you whenever you marry any one else. So you see that tho perhaps for the present it may afflict you to think of Henry’s sufferings, yet I dare say he’ll die soon and then his pain will be over and you will be easy, whereas my Trouble will last much longer for work as hard as I may, I am certain that the pantry cannot be cleared in less than a fortnight

~ Jane Austen

Before the house-maid had lit the fire the next day, or the sun gained any power over the cold, gloomy morning in January, Marianne, only half dressed, was kneeling against one of the window-seats for the sake of all the little light she could command from it, and writing as fast as a continual flow of tears would permit her.

~ Jane Austen

Mr. Knightley to be no longer coming there for his evening comfort! - No longer walking in at all hours, as if ever willing to change his own home for their's! - How was it to be endured?

~ Jane Austen

Mrs. Norris had been talking to her the whole way from Northampton of her wonderful good fortune, and the extraordinary degree of gratitude and good behaviour which it ought to produce, and her consciousness of misery was therefore increased by the idea of its being a wicked thing for her not to be happy.

~ Jane Austen

We must not be so ready to fancy ourselves intentionally injured... It is very often nothing but our own vanity that deceives us.

~ Jane Austen

Mr. ***** is blessed with such happy manners as may ensure his making friends -- whether he may be equally capable of retaining them, is less certain.

~ Jane Austen

There is nothing I would not do for those who are really my friends. I have no notion of loving people by halves, it is not my nature

~ Jane Austen

They all went indoors with their new friends, and found rooms so small as none but those who invite from the heart could think capable of accommodating so many.

~ Jane Austen

What are men to rocks and mountains?

~ Jane Austen

Adieu to disappointment and spleen. What are men to rocks and mountains?

~ Jane Austen

I assure you. I have no notion of treating men with such respect. That is the way to spoil them.

~ Jane Austen

That would be the greatest misfortune of all! -- To find a man agreeable whom one is determined to hate! -- Do not wish me such an evil.

~ Jane Austen

I cannot think well of a man who sports with any woman's feelings, and there may often be a great deal more suffered than a stander-by can judge.

~ Jane Austen

Poverty is a great evil, but to a woman of education and feeling it ought not, it cannot be the greatest.—I would rather be a teacher at a school (and I can think of nothing worse) than marry a man I did not like.

~ Jane Austen

But the same spirits of analogy will authorise me to assert that ours are the most tender. Man is more robust than woman, but he is not longer-lived; which exactly explains my view of the nature of their attachment. Nay, it would be too hard upon you, if it were otherwise. You have difficulties, and privations, and dangers enough to struggle with... It would be too hard indeed (with a faltering voice) if woman's feelings were to be added to all this!

~ Jane Austen

He then departed, to make himself still more interesting, in the midst of an heavy rain.

~ Jane Austen

A person may be proud without being vain. Pride relates more to our opinion of ourselves, vanity to what we would have others think of us.

~ Jane Austen

If any one faculty of our nature may be called more wonderful than the rest, I do think it is memory. There seems something more speakingly incomprehensible in the powers, the failures, the inequalities of memory, than in any other of our intelligences. The memory is sometimes so retentive, so serviceable, so obedient - at others, so bewildered and so weak - and at others again, so tyrannic, so beyond control! - We are to be sure a miracle every way - but our powers of recollecting and of forgetting, do seem peculiarly past finding out.

~ Jane Austen