Quotes from Jane Austen

Let me be able to fancy that a better knowledge of my heart, and of my present feelings, will draw from her a more spontaneous, more natural, more gentle, less dignified, forgiveness. Tell her of my misery and my penitence—tell her that my heart was never inconstant to her, and if you will, that at this moment she is dearer to me than ever.

Dare not say that men forget sooner than women, that his love has an earlier death. Unjust I may have been, weak and resentful I have been, but never inconstant.

With such a worshipping wife, it was hardly possible that any natural defects in it should not be increased. The extreme sweetness of her temper must hurt his.

for what after all is Youth and Beauty?

The surprise of finding himself almost alone with Anne Elliot, deprived his manners of their usual composure...

The older a person grows, Harriet, the more important it is that their manners should not be bad,—the more glaring and disgusting any loudness, or coarseness, or awkwardness becomes. What is passable in youth is detestable in later age.

A distinction to which they had been born gave no pride.

Je lui aurais volontiers pardonné son orgueil s'il n'avait tant mortifié le mien.

I do not find myself making any use of the word sacrifice , said she. — In not one of all my clever replies, my delicate negatives, is there any allusion to making a sacrifice. I do suspect that he is not really necessary to my happiness.

Pero, ¡ay!, a pesar de todos sus argumentos, Ana se dio cuenta de que para los sentimientos arraigados ocho años eran poco más que nada.

He frequently observed, as he walked out, that one handsome face would be followed by thirty, or five-and-thirty frights; and once, as he stood in a shop in Bond Street, he had counted eighty-seven women go by, one after another, without there being a tolerable face among them.

These bitter accusations might have been suppressed, had I, with greater policy, concealed my struggles, and flattered you into the belief of my being impelled by unqualified, unalloyed inclination; by reason, by reflection, by everything. But disguise of every sort is my abhorrence.

Sé de sobra –replicó Collins con un grave gesto de su mano– que entre las jóvenes es muy corriente rechazar las proposiciones del hombre a quien, en el fondo, piensan aceptar

Ella sentía que podía confiar mucho más en la sinceridad de aquellos que en alguna ocasión podían decir alguna cosa descuidada o alguna ligereza, que en aquellos cuya presencia de ánimo jamás sufría alteraciones, cuya lengua jamás se deslizaba.

That is a failing indeed! cried Elizabeth. Implacable resentment is a shade in a character. But you have chosen your fault well. I really cannot laugh at it. You are safe from me. There is, I believe, in every disposition a tendency to some particular evil—a natural defect, which not even the best education can overcome. And your defect is to hate everybody. And yours, he replied with a smile, is willfully to misunderstand them. Do

We cannot prove the contrary, to be sure—but I wish you a better fate Miss Price, than to be the wife of a man whose amiableness depends upon his own sermons; for though he may preach himself into a good humour every Sunday, it will be bad enough to have him quarrelling about green geese from Monday morning till Saturday night.

It is only poverty that makes celibacy contemptible. A single woman of good fortune is always respectable, and may be as sensible and pleasant as any body else.

I honour your circumspection. A fortnight's acquaintance is certainly very little. One cannot know what a man really is by the end of a fortnight. But if we do not venture somebody else will; and after all, Mrs. Long and her daughters must stand their chance; and, therefore, as she will think it an act of kindness, if you decline the office, I will take it on myself.

Del pasado no tiene usted que recordar más que lo placentero

A single woman, with a very narrow income, must be a ridiculous, disagreeable old maid! The proper sport of boys and girls, but a single woman, of good fortune, is always respectable, and may be as sensible and pleasant as any body else.

he eyed him with a curiosity which seemed to say, that he only wanted to know him to be rich, to be equally civil to him.

From Mrs. Bennett to Jane: I knew how it would be. I always said it must be so, at last. I was sure you could not be so beautiful for nothing!

If my children are silly, I must hope to be always sensible of it.

You are too sensible a girl to fall in love merely because you are warned against it.