Quotes By Jane Austen

I am afraid that the pleasantness of an employment does not always evince its propriety.

I cannot speak well enough to be unintelligible.

A large income is the best recipe for happiness I ever heard of.

One half of the world cannot understand the pleasures of the other.

Those who do not complain are never pitied.

An engaged woman is always more agreeable than a disengaged. She is satisfied with herself. Her cares are over, and she feels that she may exert all her powers of pleasing without suspicion. All is safe with a lady engaged; no harm can be done.

To flatter and follow others, without being flattered and followed in turn, is but a state of half enjoyment.

From politics, it was an easy step to silence.

Where an opinion is general, it is usually correct.

Friendship is certainly the finest balm for the pangs of disappointed love.

A mind lively and at ease, can do with seeing nothing, and can see nothing that does not answer.

I do not want people to be very agreeable, as it saves me the trouble of liking them a great deal.

Men have had every advantage of us in telling their own story. Education has been theirs in so much higher a degree; the pen has been in their hands. I will not allow books to prove anything.

Nobody minds having what is too good for them.

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.

No man is offended by another man's admiration of the woman he loves; it is the woman only who can make it a torment.

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

Life seems but a quick succession of busy nothings.

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.

Human nature is so well disposed towards those who are in interesting situations, that a young person, who either marries or dies, is sure of being kindly spoken of.

There is nothing like staying at home for real comfort.

How quick come the reasons for approving what we like!

There is something so amiable in the prejudices of a young mind, that one is sorry to see them give way to the reception of more general opinions.

One does not love a place the less for having suffered in it, unless it has been all suffering, nothing but suffering.

I have been a selfish being all my life, in practice, though not in principle.

Vanity working on a weak head, produces every sort of mischief.

If things are going untowardly one month, they are sure to mend the next.

One cannot be always laughing at a man without now and then stumbling on something witty.

Good-humoured, unaffected girls, will not do for a man who has been used to sensible women. They are two distinct orders of being.

It is happy for you that you possess the talent of flattering with delicacy. May I ask whether these pleasing attentions proceed from the impulse of the moment, or are they the result of previous study?