Quotes from Jane Austen

My idea of good company, Mr. Eliot, is the company of clever, well-informed people who have a great deal of conversation; that is what I call good company.

Where people are really attached, poverty itself is wealth.

No puedo concretar la hora, ni el sitio, ni la mirada, ni las palabras que pusieron los cimientos de mi amor. Hace bastante tiempo. Estaba ya medio enamorado de ti antes de saber que te quería - Mr. Darcy

My characters shall have, after a little trouble, all that they desire.

Brandon is just the kind of man whom every body speaks well of, and nobody cares about; whom all are delighted to see, and nobody remembers to talk to.

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

Vanity, not love, has been my folly.

But I hate to hear you talking so like a fine gentleman, and as if women were all fine ladies, instead of rational creatures. We none of us expect to be in smooth water all our days.

A lady, without a family, was the very best preserver of furniture in the world.

When I look out on such a night as this, I feel as if there could be neither wickedness nor sorrow in the world; and there certainly would be less of both if the sublimity of Nature were more attended to, and people were carried more out of themselves by contemplating such a scene.

Pray, pray be composed, and do not betray what you feel to every body present

My dear Alicia, of what a mistake were you guilty in marrying a man of his age! Just old enough to be formal, ungovernable, and to have the gout; too old to be agreeable, too young to die.

Emma Woodhouse, handsome, clever, and rich, with a comfortable home and happy disposition, seemed to unite some of the best blessings of existence; and had lived nearly twenty-one years in the world with very little to distress or vex her.

Success supposes endeavour.

I will not say that your mulberry trees are dead; but I am afraid they're not alive.

But Catherine did not know her own advantages - did not know that a good-looking girl, with an affectionate heart and a very ignorant mind, cannot fail of attracting a clever young man, unless circumstances are particularly untoward.

I cannot forget the follies and vices of others so soon as I ought, nor their offences against myself...My good opinion once lost is lost forever. - Fitzwilliam Darcy

The one claim I shall make for my own sex is that we love longest, when all hope is gone.

I am very strong. Nothing ever fatigues me, but doing what I do not like.

We all love to instruct, though we can teach only what is not worth knowing.

I could not sit seriously down to write a serious Romance under any other motive than to save my life, & if it were indispensable for me to keep it up & never relax into laughing at myself or other people, I am sure I should be hung before I had finished the first chapter. No - I must keep my own style & go on in my own way; and though I may never succeed again in that, I am convinced that I should totally fail in any other.

I frequently observe that one pretty face would be followed by five and thirty frights.

She was happy, she knew she was happy, and knew she ought to be happy.

You have qualities which I had not before supposed to exist in such a degree in any human creature. You have some touches of the angel in you.