Quotes from Jane Austen

But one never does form a just idea of anybody beforehand. One takes up a notion and runs away with it.

Too many cooks spoil the broth

How could you begin?' said she. 'I can comprehend your going on when you had once made a beginning, but what could set you off in the first place?' 'I cannot fix on the hour, or the spot, or the look, or the words, which had laid the foundation. It is too long ago. I was in the middle before I knew that I had begun.

She wished such words unsaid with all her heart

It was not in her nature, however, to increase her vexations by dwelling on them. She was confident of having performed her duty, and to fret over unavoidable evils, or augment them by anxiety, was not part of her disposition.

Elinor was to be the comforter of others in her own distresses, no less than in theirs; and all the comfort that could be given by assurances of her own composure of mind, and a very earnest vindication of Edward from every charge but of imprudence, was readily offered.

The Very first moment I beheld him, my heart was irrevocably gone." ? Jane Austen, Love and Friendship

Manners is what holds a society together. At bottom, propriety is concern for other people. When that goes out the window, the gates of hell are shortly opened and ignorance is King.

If any young men come for Mary or Kitty, send them in, for I am quite as leisure.

We none of us expect to be in smooth water all our days.

To yield readily--easily--to the persuasion of a friend is no merit.... To yield without conviction is no compliment to the understanding of either.

She] is one of those young ladies who seek to recommend themselves to the other sex by undervaluing their own, and with many men, I dare say, it succeeds. But, in my opinion, it is a paltry device, a very mean art.

Everybody is taken in at some period or another. [...] In marriage especially. [...] There is not one in a hundred of either sex, who is not taken in when they marry. Look where I will, I see that it is so; and I feel that it must be so, when I consider that it is, of all transactions, the one in which people expect most from others, and are least honest with themselves.

Trusting that you will some time or other do me greater justice than you can do now.

My illness, I well knew, had been entirely brought on by myself by such negligence of my own health, as I had felt even at the time to be wrong. Had I died, it would have been self-destruction.

My heart is, and always will be, yours.

That loss of virtue in a female is irretrievable-- that one false step involves her in endless ruin-- that her reputation is no less brittle than it is beautiful-- and that she cannot be too much guarded in her behavior towards the undeserving of the opposite sex. ~Mary Bennett, P&P

An interval of meditation, serious and grateful, was the best corrective of everything dangerous.

We neither of us perform to strangers.

one half of her should not be always so much wiser than the other half…

Nobody meant to be unkind, but nobody put themselves out of their way to secure her comfort.

when people are waiting, they are bad judges of time, and every half minute seems like five.

She has many rare and charming qualities, but Sobriety is not one of them.

I should like balls infinitely better,' she replied, 'if they were carried on in a different manner; but there is something insufferably tedious in the usual process of such a meeting. It would surely be much more rational if conversation instead of dancing were made the order of they day.' 'Much more rational, my dear Caroline, I dare say, but it would not be near so much like a ball.