Quotes from Jane Austen

El poder de separar dos personas que se quieren tan intensamente no está al alcance de una persona ajena.

Shyness is only the effect of a sense of inferiority in some way or other. If I could persuade myself that my manner were perfectly easy and graceful, I should not be shy

her mind about as ignorant and uninformed as the female mind at seventeen usually is.

Nobody could catch cold by the sea; nobody wanted appetite by the sea; nobody wanted spirits; nobody wanted strength. Sea air was healing, softening, relaxing -- fortifying and bracing -- seemingly just as was wanted -- sometimes one, sometimes the other. If the sea breeze failed, the seabath was the certain corrective; and where bathing disagreed, the sea air alone was evidently designed by nature for the cure.

F]or though a very few hours spent in hard labour of incessant talking will dispatch more subjects than can really be in common between any two rational creatures, yet with lovers it is different. Between them no subject is finished, no communication is even made, till it has been made at least twenty times over.

The power of doing anything with quickness is always prized much by the possessor, and often without any attention to the imperfection of the performance.

Cuando alguien ha perdido mi buena opinión, perdida la tiene para siempre.

May I ask you what these questions tend?' 'Merely to the illustration of your character,' said she, endeavouring to shake off her gravity. 'I am trying to make it out.' 'And what is your success?' She shook her head. 'I do not get on at all. I hear such different accounts of you as puzzle me exceedingly.

A scheme of which every part promises delight, can never be successful; and general disappointment is only warded off by the defence of some little peculiar vexation.

She longed to know what at the moment was passing in his mind, in what manner he thought of her, and whether, in defiance of everything, she was still dear to him. Perhaps he had been civil only because he felt himself at ease; yet there had been that in his voice which was not like ease. Whether he had felt more of pain or of pleasure in seeing her she could not tell, but he certainly had not seen her with composure." (Jane Austen,"Pride and prejudice", Chapter 43)

He will make you happy, Fanny; I know he will make you happy; but you will make him everything.

No one can withstand the charm of such a mystery.

I pay very little regard, said Mrs. Grant, to what any young person says on the subject of marriage. If they profess a disinclination for it, I only set it down that they have not yet seen the right person.

Where the heart is really attached, I know very well how little one can be pleased with the attention of any body else. Everything is so insipid, so uninteresting, that does not relate to the beloved object!

I've been used to consider poetry as the food of love Mr.Darcy Of a fine, stout, healthy love it may. Everything nourishes what is strong already. But if it be only a slight, thin sort of inclination, I am convinced that one good sonnet will starve it entirely away. Eliza

But to live in ignorance on such a point was impossible.

What do I not owe you! You taught me a lesson, hard indeed at first, but most advantageous. By you, I was properly humbled. I came to you without a doubt of my reception. You showed me how insufficient were all my pretensions to please a woman worthy of being pleased. — Darcy

Oh! to be sure, cried Emma, it is always incomprehensible to a man that a woman should ever refuse an offer of marriage. A man always imagines a woman to be ready for any body who asks her.

I use the verb 'to torment,' as I observed to be your own method, instead of 'to instruct,' supposing them to be now admitted as synonymous.

There is a fine old saying, which everybody here is of course familiar with: 'Keep your breath to cool your porridge'; and I shall keep mine to swell my song.

A man who had felt less, might.

But history, real solemn history, I cannot be interested in. Can you? Yes, I am fond of history. I wish I were too. I read it a little as a duty, but it tells me nothing that does not either vex or weary me. The quarrels of popes and kings, with wars or pestilences, in every page; the men all so good for nothing, and hardly any women at all -- it is very tiresome.

Henry] felt himself bound as much in honour as in affection to Miss Morland, and believing that heart to be his own which he had been directed to gain, no unworthy retraction of a tacit consent, no reversing feared of unjustifiable anger, could shake his fidelity, or influence the resolutions it prompted.

Recuerde sólo en el pasado aquello que le sea grato.