Quotes from Jane Austen

Life could do nothing for her, beyond giving time for a better preparation for death.

We are each of an unsocial, taciturn disposition, unwilling to speak, unless we expect to say something that will amaze the whole room, and be handed down to posterity with all the eclat of a proverb.

And sometimes I have kept my feelings to myself, because I could find no language to describe them in.

I cannot comprehend the neglect of a family library in such days as these. - Mr. Darcy

Where the heart is really attached, I know very well how little one can be pleased with the attention of any body else.

I walk: I prefer walking.

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

I have the highest respect for your nerves, they are my old friends.

It is not what we think or feel that makes us who we are. It is what we do. Or fail to do...

I am not at all in a humor for writing; I must write on till I am.

You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope. Tell me not that I am too late, that such precious feelings are gone for ever. I offer myself to you again with a heart even more your own than when you almost broke it, eight and a half years ago. Dare not say that a man forgets sooner than woman, that his love has an earlier death. I have loved none but you. Unjust I may have been, weak and resentful I have been, but never inconstant.

Money can only give happiness where there is nothing else to give it.

I was so anxious to do what is right that I forgot to do what is right.

Let other pens dwell on guilt and misery. I quit such odious subjects as soon as I can, impatient to restore everybody not greatly in fault themselves to tolerable comfort, and to have done with all the rest.

It is very often nothing but our own vanity that deceives us. Women fancy admiration means more than it does. And men take care that they should.

Surprises are foolish things. The pleasure is not enhanced, and the inconvenience is often considerable.

I am not fond of the idea of my shrubberies being always approachable.

I certainly have not the talent which some people possess, of conversing easily with those I have never seen before.

If I had ever learnt, I should have been a great proficient.

She told the story, however, with great spirit among her friends; for she had a lively, playful disposition, which delighted in any thing ridiculous.

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife. However little known the feelings or views of such a man may be on his first entering a neighbourhood, this truth is so well fixed in the minds of the surrounding families, that he is considered as the rightful property of someone or other of their daughters.

Sometimes one is guided by what they say of themselves, and very frequently by what other people say of them, without giving oneself time to deliberate and judge. -Elinor Dashwood

She was stronger alone; and her own good sense so well supported her, that her firmness was as unshaken, her appearance of cheerfulness as invariable, as, with regrets so poignant and so fresh, it was possible for them to be.

Elinor could sit still no longer. She almost ran out of the room, and as soon as the door was closed, burst into tears of joy, which at first she thought would never cease.