Quotes By Jane Austen

What is right to be done cannot be done too soon.

There is no charm equal to tenderness of heart.

Woman is fine for her own satisfaction alone. No man will admire her the more, no woman will like her the better for it. Neatness and fashion are enough for the former, and a something of shabbiness or impropriety will be most endearing to the latter.

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

The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid.

It is always incomprehensible to a man that a woman should ever refuse an offer of marriage.

One man's style must not be the rule of another's.

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.

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

I cannot speak well enough to be unintelligible.

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.

They are much to be pitied who have not been given a taste for nature early in life.

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

Where an opinion is general, it is usually correct.

The more I know of the world, the more I am convinced that I shall never see a man whom I can really love.

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

Where youth and diffidence are united, it requires uncommon steadiness of reason to resist the attraction of being called the most charming girl in the world.

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.

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

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.

There are certainly not so many men of large fortune in the world, as there are pretty women to deserve them.

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

Happiness in marriage is entirely a matter of chance.

Life seems but a quick succession of busy nothings.

General benevolence, but not general friendship, made a man what he ought to be.

How quick come the reasons for approving what we like!