Quotes from Jane Austen

Such squeamish youths as cannot bear to be connected with a little absurdity are not worth a regret.

It has sunk him, I cannot say how much it has sunk him in my opinion. So unlike what a man should be!-None of that upright integrity, that strict adherence to truth and principle, that distain of trick and littleness, which a man should display in every transaction of his life.

Cold-hearted Elinor! Oh! Worse than cold-hearted! Ashamed of being otherwise.

I do regard her as one who is too modest for the world in general to be aware of half her accomplishments, and too highly accomplished for modesty to be natural of any other woman.

How clever you are, to know something of which you are ignorant.

Money is the best recipe for happiness.

And your defect is a propensity to hate everybody. And yours, he replied with a smile, is willfully to misunderstand them.

She is probably by this time as tired of me, as I am of her; but as she is too Polite and I am too civil to say so, our letters are still as frequent and affectionate as ever, and our Attachment as firm and sincere as when it first commenced.

Marianne Dashwood was born to an extraordinary fate. She was born to discover the falsehood of her own opinions, and to counteract, by her conduct, her most favourite maxims.

I think I may boast myself to be, with all possible vanity, the most unlearned and uninformed female who ever dared to be an authoress.

And now I may dismiss my heroine to the sleepless couch, which is the true heroine's portion - to a pillow strewed with thorns and wet with tears. And lucky may she think herself, if she get another good night's rest in the course of the next three months.

My Emma, does not every thing serve to prove more and more the beauty of truth and sincerity in all our dealings with each other?

Catherine [...] enjoyed her usual happiness with Henry Tilney, listening with sparkling eyes to everything he said; and, in finding him irresistible, becoming so herself.

But to appear happy when I am so miserable — Oh! who can require it?

If you will thank me, let it be for yourself alone. That the wish of giving happiness to you, might add force to the other inducements which led me on, I shall not attempt to deny. But your family owe me nothing. Much as I respect them, I believe, I thought only of you.

I do not wish to avoid the walk. The distance is nothing when one has a motive.

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

No poseo el talento de otros que pueden conversar con facilidad con quienes nunca han visto. No tengo valor para ello ni puedo adaptarme al carácter de los demás con la facilidad que otros lo hacen.

The enthusiasm of a woman's love is even beyond the biographer's.

He had an affectionate heart.  He must love somebody.

With a book he was regardless of time.

I never wish to offend, but I am so foolishly shy, that I often seem negligent, when I am only kept back by my natural awkwardness.

He was the proudest, most disagreeable man in the world, and every body hoped that he would never come there again.

We must not be so ready to fancy ourselves intentionally injured. We must not expect a lively young man to be always so guarded and circumspect. It is very often nothing but our own vanity that deceives us. Women fancy admiration means more than it does.