Quotes from Jane Austen

There is not the hundredth part of the wine consumed in this kingdom that there ought to be. Our foggy climate wants help.

Where an opinion is general, it is usually correct.

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

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

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.

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

The less said the better.

But when a young lady is to be a heroine, the perverseness of forty surrounding families cannot prevent her. Something must and will happen to throw a hero in her way.

Where so many hours have been spent in convincing myself that I am right, is there not some reason to fear I may be wrong?

A lucky guess is never merely luck. There is always some talent in it.

And have you never known the pleasure and triumph of a lucky guess? I pity you. I thought you cleverer; for depend upon it, a lucky guess is never merely luck. There is always some talent in it.

Happiness in marriage is entirely a matter of chance.

I would rather have young people settle on a small income at once, and have to struggle with a few difficulties together, than be involved in a long engagement.

Marriage is indeed a maneuvering business.

I have no pretensions whatever to that kind of elegance which consists in tormenting a respectable man.

It is not every man's fate to marry the woman who loves him best

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.

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

for he is such a disagreeable man, that it would be quite a misfortune to be liked by him.

If a woman is partial to a man, and does not endeavour to conceal it, he must find it out." -Elizabeth

[A]utumn, that season of peculiar and inexhaustible influence on the mind of taste and tenderness, that season which has drawn from every poet, worthy of being read, some attempt at description, or some lines of feeling. She occupied her mind as much as possible in such like musings and quotations...

What gown and what head-dress she should wear on the occasion became her chief concern. She cannot be justified in it. Dress is at all times a frivolous distinction, and excessive solicitude about it often destroys its own aim...

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

None of us want to be in calm waters all our lives.