Quotes from Jane Austen

I am now convinced that I have never been much in love; for had I really experienced that pure and elevating passion, I should at present detest his very name, and wish him all manner of evil. But my feelings are not only cordial towards him; they are even impartial towards her. I cannot find out that I hate her at all, or that I am in the least unwilling to think her a very good sort of girl. There can be no love in all this.

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?

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.

We live at home, quiet, confined, and our feelings prey upon us.

To her own heart it was a delightful affair, to her imagination it was even a ridiculous one, but to her reason, her judgment, it was completely a puzzle.

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

to hope was to expect

I will only add, God bless you.

that sanguine expectation of happiness which is happiness itself

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.

Reflection must be reserved for solitary hours; whenever she was alone, she gave way to it as the greatest relief; and not a day went by without a solitary walk, in which she might indulge in all the delight of unpleasant recollections.

It is very often nothing but our own vanity that deceives us.

There is one thing, Emma, which a man can always do if he chooses, and that is his duty; not by manoeuvring and finessing, but by vigour and resolution. - Mr. Knightley

I have been meditating on the very great pleasure which a pair of fine eyes in the face of a pretty woman can bestow.

Let other pens dwell on guilt and misery.

I cannot think well of a man who sports with any woman's feelings; and there may often be a great deal more suffered than a stander-by can judge of.

And to all this she must yet add something more substantial, in the improvement of her mind by extensive reading.

You were disgusted with the women who were always speaking and looking, and thinking for your approbation alone. I roused, and interested you, because I was so unlike them.

I am excessively fond of a cottage; there is always so much comfort, so much elegance about them. And I protest, if I had any money to spare, I should buy a little land and build one myself, within a short distance of London, where I might drive myself down at any time, and collect a few friends about me and be happy. I advise everybody who is going to build, to build a cottage.

Miss Morland, no one can think more highly of the understanding of women than I do. In my opinion, nature has given them so much, that they never find it necessary to use more than half.

Full many a flower is born to blush unseen, And waste it's fragrance on the desert air.

I have no talent for certainty.

How much sooner one tires of anything than of a book!

Books--oh! no. I am sure we never read the same, or not with the same feelings. I am sorry you think so; but if that be the case, there can at least be no want of subject. We may compare our different opinions.