Quotes By Jane Austen

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.

To sit in the shade on a fine day and look upon verdure is the most perfect refreshment.

A lady's imagination is very rapid; it jumps from admiration to love, from love to matrimony in a moment.

How quick come the reasons for approving what we like!

To look almost pretty is an acquisition of higher delight to a girl who has been looking plain for the first fifteen years of her life than a beauty from her cradle can ever receive.

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.

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

Single women have a dreadful propensity for being poor. Which is one very strong argument in favor of matrimony.

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

Business, you know, may bring you money, but friendship hardly ever does.

Selfishness must always be forgiven you know, because there is no hope of a cure.

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?

We do not look in our great cities for our best morality.

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.

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

A person who can write a long letter with ease, cannot write ill.

To be fond of dancing was a certain step towards falling in love.

Next to being married, a girl likes to be crossed in love a little now and then.

In nine cases out of ten, a woman had better show more affection than she feels.

What wild imaginations one forms where dear self is concerned! How sure to be mistaken!

From politics, it was an easy step to silence.

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

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.

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.

Seldom, very seldom, does complete truth belong to any human disclosure; seldom can it happen that something is not a little disguised, or a little mistaken.

Dress is at all times a frivolous distinction, and excessive solicitude about it often destroys its own aim.

My sore throats are always worse than anyone's.