Jane Austen Quotes

…each found her greatest safety in silence…

~ Jane Austen

If a woman conceals her affection with the same skill from the object of it, she may lose the opportunity of fixing him; and it will then be but poor consolation to believe the world equally in the dark. There is so much of gratitude or vanity in almost any attachment, that it is not safe to leave any to itself. We can all begin ‘freely’- as light preference is natural enough; but there are very few of us who have a heart enough to be really in love without encouragement.

~ Jane Austen

She was of course only too good for him; but as nobody minds having what is too good for them, he was very steadily earnest in the pursuit of the blessing, and it was not possible that encouragement from her should be long wanting.

~ Jane Austen

For though a very few hours spent in the hard labour of incessant talking will dispatch more subjects than can really be in common between any two rational creatures, yet with lovers it is different. Between them no subject is finished, no communication is ever made, till it has been made at least twenty times over.

~ Jane Austen

I must tell you what you will not ask, though I may wish it unsaid the next moment

~ Jane Austen

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.

~ Jane Austen

Eleanor went to her room where she was free to think and be wretched.

~ Jane Austen

…Elinor was then at liberty to think and be wretched.

~ Jane Austen

But I will not repine. It cannot last long. He will be forgot, and we shall all be as we were before.

~ Jane Austen

She felt the loss of Willoughby's character yet more heavily than she had felt the loss of his heart.

~ Jane Austen

I have faults enough, but they are not, I hope, of understanding. My temper I dare not vouch for. It is, I believe, too little yielding— certainly too little for the convenience of the world. I cannot forget the follies and vices of other so soon as I ought, nor their offenses against myself. My feelings are not puffed about with every attempt to move them. My temper would perhaps be called resentful. My good opinion once lost, is lost forever.

~ Jane Austen

The politeness which she had been brought up to practice as a duty made it impossible for her to escape; while the want of that higher species of self-command, that just consideration of others, that knowledge of her own heart, that principle of right which had not formed any essential part of her education, made her miserable under it.

~ Jane Austen

He had just compunction enough for having done nothing for his sisters himself, to be exceedingly anxious that everybody else should do a great deal.

~ Jane Austen

She had always wanted to do every thing, and had made more progress in both drawing and music than many might have done with so little labour as she ever would submit to... She was not much deceived as to her own skill either as an artist or a musician, but she was not unwilling to have others deceived, or sorry to know her reputation for accomplishment often higher than it deserved.

~ Jane Austen

Depend upon it you see but half. You see the evil, but you do not see the consolation. There will be little rubs and disappointments everywhere, and we are all apt to expect too much; but then if one scheme of happiness fails, human nature turns to another; if the first calculation is wrong, we make a second better; we find comfort somewhere- and those evil-minded observers, dearest Mary, who make much of a little, are more taken in and deceived than the parties themselves.

~ Jane Austen

We must consider what Miss. Fairfax quits, before we condemn her taste for what she goes to.

~ Jane Austen

Pride,’ observed Mary, who piqued herself upon the solidity of her reflections, ‘is a very common failing, I believe. By all that I have ever read, I am convinced that it is very common indeed; that human nature is particularly prone to it, and that there are very few of us who do not cherish a feeling of self-complacency on the score of some quality or other, real or imaginary.

~ Jane Austen

Oh! what a silly Thing is Woman! How vain, how unreasonable!

~ Jane Austen

With a book, he was regardless of time.

~ Jane Austen

By you, I was properly humbled. I came to you without a doubt of my reception. You shewed me how insufficient were all my pretensions to please a woman worthy of being pleased.

~ Jane Austen

Nothing is more deceitful than the appearance of humility. It is often only carelessness of opinion and somethings an indirect boast.

~ Jane Austen

I should wish to see them very good friends, and would, on no account, authorize in my girls the smallest degree of arrogance towards their relations; but still they cannot be equals.” (10)

~ Jane Austen

You are infinitely my superior in merit; all that I know - You have qualities which I had not supposed to exist in such a degree in any human creature. You have some touches of the angel in you, beyond what - not merely beyond what one sees, because one never sees any thing like it - but beyond what one fancies might be. But still I am not frightened. It is not by equality of merit that you can be won. That is out of the question. It is he who sees and worships your merit the strongest, who loves you most devotedly, that has the best right to a return.” (326)

~ Jane Austen

...the pleasantness of an employment does not always evince its propriety.

~ Jane Austen

It was gratitude; gratitude, not merely for having once loved her, but for loving her still well enough to forgive all the petulance and acrimony of her manner in rejecting him, and all the unjust accusations accompanying her rejection.

~ Jane Austen

It was gratitude; gratitude, not merelyfor having once loved her, but for loving her still well enough to forgive all the petulance and acrimony of her manner in rejecting him.

~ Jane Austen

Nothing was so likely to do her good as a little quiet cheerfulness at home.

~ Jane Austen

Young people do not like to be always thwarted.

~ Jane Austen

Respect for right conduct is felt by every body.

~ Jane Austen

He paid her only the compliment of attention; and she felt a respect for him on the occasion, which the others had reasonably forfeited by their shameless want of taste.

~ Jane Austen

Vanity and pride are different things, though the words are often used synonymously. 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

Pride has often been his best friend. It has connected him nearer with virtue than any other feeling.

~ Jane Austen

Completely and perfectly and incandescently happy...

~ Jane Austen

Pride is a very common failing, I believe. By all that I have ever read, I am convinced that it is very common indeed; that human nature is particularly prone to it, and that there are very few of us who do not cherish a feeling of self-complacency on the score of some quality or other, real or imaginary.

~ Jane Austen

A distinction to which they had been born gave no pride.

~ Jane Austen

Her tears fell abundantly--but her grief was so truly artless, that no dignity could have made it more respectable in Emma's eyes--and she listened to her and tried to console her with all her heart and understanding--really for the time convinced that Harriet was the superior creature of the two--and that to resemble her would be more for her own welfare and happiness than all that genius or intelligence could do.It was rather too late in the day to set about being simple-minded and ignorant; but she left her with every previous resolution confirmed of being humble and discreet, and repressing imagination all the rest of her life.

~ Jane Austen

When the evening was over, Anne could not but be amused at the idea of her coming to Lyme, to preach patience and resignation to a young man whom she had never seen before; nor could she help fearing, on more serious reflection, that, like many other great moralists and preachers, she had been eloquent on a point in which her own conduct would ill bear examination.

~ Jane Austen

Anne did think on the question with perfect decision, and said as much in replay as her own feelings could accomplish, or as his seemed able to bear, for he was too much affected to renew the subject - and when he spoke again, it was something totally different.

~ Jane Austen

Whenever you are transplanted, like me, you will understand how very delightful it is to meet with anything at all like what one has left behind.

~ Jane Austen

I do not wish to avoid the walk. The distance is nothing when one has a motive.

~ Jane Austen