Quotes from Jane Austen

If we have not hearts, we have eyes; and they give us torment enough.

I am not one of those young ladies who are so daring to risk their happiness on the chance of being asked a second time.

How little the general report of any one ought to be credited, since no character, however upright, can escape the malevolence of slander.

I thank you again and again for the hounour you have done me in your proposals, but to accept them is absolutely impossible. My feelings in every respect forbid it. Can I speak plainer? Do not consider me now as an elegant female, intending to plague you, but as an rational creature, speaking the truth from her heart.

It is possible to read too many novels. Henry Tileny, Northanger Abbey

Her face was so lovely, that when, in the common want of praise, she was called a beautiful girl, truth was less violently outraged than usually happens.

The Very first moment I beheld him, my heart was irrevocably gone

And then when you go away, you may leave one or two of my sisters behind you; and I dare say I shall get husbands for them before the winter is over.'' I thank you for my share of the favour,'' said Elizabeth, But I do not particularly like your way of getting husbands.

How wonderful, how very wonderful the operations of time, and the changes of the human mind!

I know you do; and it is that which makes the wonder. With your good sense, to be so honestly blind to the follies and nonsense of others! Affectation of candour is common enough—one meets with it everywhere. But to be candid without ostentation or design—to take the good of everybody's character and make it still better, and say nothing of the bad—belongs to you alone. And so you like this man's sisters, too, do you? Their manners are not equal to his.

though I always imagined from her increasing friendship for us since her husband's death that we should, at some future period, be obliged to receive her.

El que ella no se lo reproche, no lo justifica a él. Solo demuestra que ella carece de algo, bien de prudencia, bien de sentimiento.

I will be mistress of myself.

Finchè l'immaginazione altrui galopperà per formarsi opinioni errate sulla nostra condotta e giudicarla da superficiali apparenze, la nostra felicità sarà sempre, si può dire, nelle mani del caso.

The real evils, indeed, of Emma's situation were the power of having rather too much her own way, and a disposition to think a little too well of herself; these were the disadvantages which threatened alloy to her many enjoyments. The danger, however, was at present so unperceived, that they did not by any means rank as misfortunes with her.

aunque se deseara con impaciencia, un acontecimiento no traía consigo, al producirse, toda la satisfacción esperada.

but a mind of usefulness and ingenuity seemed to furnish him with constant employment within.

It is not every one, said Elinor, who has your passion for dead leaves.

But while the imaginations of other people will carry them away to form wrong judgements of our conduct, and to decide on it by slight appearances, one's happiness must in some measure be always at the mercy of chance.

I hope I never ridicule what is wise or good.

My courage always rises at every attempt to intimidate me.

in dawdling through the greenhouse, where the loss of her favorite plants, unwarily exposed, and nipped by the lingering frost, raised the laughter of Charlotte,-and in visiting her poultry-yard, where in the disappointed hopes of her dairymaid, by hens forsaking their nests, or being stolen by a fox, or in the rapid decease of a promising young brood, she found fresh sources of merriment.

She did not really like her. She would not be in a hurry to find fault, but she suspected that there was no elegance, ease, but not elegance... Her person was rather good; her face not unpretty; but neither feature nor air, nor voice, nor manner were elegant.

One had rather, on such occasions, do too much than too little.