Quotes from Jane Austen

He held it indeed as certain, that no person, [...] could be really in a state of secure and permanent Health without spending at least six weeks by the Sea every year.

I consider a country-dance as an emblem of marriage. Fidelity and complaisance are the principal duties of both; and those men who do not choose to dance or marry themselves, have no business with the partners or wives of their neighbours.

The more I see of the world, the more am I dissatisfied with it; and every day confirms my belief of the inconsistency of all human characters, and of the little dependence that can be placed on the appearance of either merit or sense.

It may be possible to do without dancing entirely. Instances have been known of young people passing many, many months successively, without being at any ball of any description, and no material injury accrue either to body or mind

If one scheme of happiness fails, human nature turns to another; if the first calculation is wrong, we make a second better.

Harriet was one of those, who, having once begun, would be always in love.

Stupid men are the only ones worth knowing, after all.

And is that all you can say for him?" cried Marianne, indignantly. "But what are his manners on more intimate acquaintance? What his pursuits, his talents, and genius?" Sir John was rather puzzled.

These are difficulties which you must settle for yourself. Choose your own degree of crossness. I shall press you no more.

Seldom, very seldom, does complete truth belong to any human disclosure; seldom can it happen that something is not a little disguised, or a little mistaken;

His pleasure in music, though it amounted not to that extatic delight which alone could sympathize with her own, was estimable when contrasted against the horrible insensibility of the others; and she was reasonable enough to allow that a man of five and thirty might well have outlived all acuteness of feeling and every exquisite power of enjoyment. She was perfectly disposed to make every allowance for the colonel's advanced state of life which humanity required.

We must not be so ready to fancy ourselves intentionally injured.

Keep your breath to cool your porridge'; and I shall keep mine to swell my song.

Darcy had walked away to another part of the room. She followed him with her eyes, envied everyone to whom he spoke, had scarcely patience enough to help anybody to coffee; and then was enraged against herself for being so silly!

Creo que en todo individuo hay cierta tendencia a un determinado mal, a un defecto innato, que ni siquiera la mejor educación puede vencer.

Men have had every advantage of us is telling their own story. Education has been theirs in so much higher a degree; the pen has been in their hands. I will not allow books to prove any thing.

There is something soothing in the idea that we have the same friend, and that whatever unhappy differences of opinion may exist between us, we are united in our love of you. It

Believe me, I have no pleasure in the world superior to that of contributing to yours. No

How hard it is in some cases to be believed! And how impossible in others!

And have you never known the pleasure and triumph of a lucky guess?—I pity you.—I thought you cleverer—for, depend upon it a lucky guess is never merely luck. There is always some talent in it. And as to my poor word 'success,' which you quarrel with, I do not know that I am so entirely without any claim to it. You have drawn two pretty pictures; but I think there may be a third—a something between the do-nothing and the do-all.

e eu seria a primeira a fechar os olhos a seu orgulho, se ele não tivesse ferido o meu.

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

He had found her agitated and low. Frank Churchill was a villain. He heard her declare that she had never loved him. Frank Churchill's character was not desperate. She was his own Emma, by hand and word, when they returned into the house; and if he could have thought of Frank Churchill then, he might have deemed him a very good sort of fellow.

But it was her business to be satisfied—and certainly her temper to be happy; and all was soon right again.