Quotes from Jane Austen

My dear Mr. Bennet, said his lady to him one day, have you heard that Netherfield Park is let at last?

He is also handsome, replied Elizabeth, which a young man ought likewise to be, if he possibly can. His character is thereby complete.

All this she must possess, added Darcy, and to all this she must yet add something more substantial, in the improvement of her mind by extensive reading.

Here I am once more in this scene of dissipation and vice, and I begin already to find my morals corrupted. -- Jane Austen's Letters August 1796

Every body has their taste in noises as well as other matters; and sounds are quite innoxious, or most distressing, by their sort rather than their quantity.

A natural sequel of an unnatural beginning.

Oh! Single, my dear, to be sure! A single man of large fortune; four or five thousand a year. What a fine thing for our girls!

As a brother, a landlord, a master, she considered how many people's happiness were in his guardianship! -- How much of pleasure or pain it was in his power to bestow! -- How much of good or evil must be done by him!

One cannot know what a man really is by the end of a fortnight.

she was quite ready to be fallen in love with.

Not very good, I am afraid. But now really, do not you think Udolpho the nicest book in the world? The nicest—by which I suppose you mean the neatest. That must depend upon the binding.

Anne wondered whether it ever occurred to him now, to question the justness of his own previous opinion as to the universal felicity and advantage of firmness of character; and whether it might not strike him that, like all other qualities of the mind, it should have its proportions and limits. She thought it could scarcely escape him to feel that a persuadable temper might sometimes be as much in favour of happiness as a very resolute character.

They went to the sands, to watch the flowing of the tide, which a fine south-easterly breeze was bringing in all the grandeur which so flat a shore admitted. They praised the morning; gloried in the sea; sympathized in the delight of the fresh-feeling breeze- and were silent...

Mrs. Allen was] never satisfied with the day unless she spent the chief of it by the side of Mrs. Thorpe, in what they called conversation, but in which there was scarcely ever any exchange of opinion, and not often any resemblance of subject, for Mrs. Thorpe talked chiefly of her children, and Mrs. Allen of her gowns.

Is not poetry the food of love?

Well, my comfort is, I am sure Jane will die of a broken heart, and then he will be sorry for what he has done.

His own enjoyment, or his own ease, was, in every particular, his ruling principle.

I am worn out with civility.

But remember that the pain of parting from friends will be felt by every body at times, whatever be their education or state.

Anne could not immediately fall into a quotation again. The sweet scenes of autumn were for a while put by - unless some tender sonnet, fraught with the apt analogy of the declining year, with declining happiness, and the images of youth and hope, and spring, all gone together, blessed her memory.

Elinor was then at liberty to think and be wretched.

Mine is a misery which nothing can do away.

He admires as a lover, not as a connoisseur. To satisfy me, those characters must be united. I could not be happy with a man whose taste did not in every point coincide with my own. He must enter into all my feelings: the same books, the same music must charm us both.

Consideration and Esteem surely follow command of Language as Admiration waits on Beauty