Here are a few of my favorite quotes by Jane Austen:
A lady’s imagination is very rapid; it jumps from admiration to love, from love to matrimony in a moment.
A mind lively and at ease, can do with seeing nothing, and can see nothing that does not answer.
A person who can write a long letter with ease, cannot write ill.
A woman, especially, if she have the misfortune of knowing anything, should conceal it as well as she can.
An engaged woman is always more agreeable than a disengaged. She is satisfied with herself. Her cares are over, and she feels that she may exert all her powers of pleasing without suspicion. All is safe with a lady engaged; no harm can be done.
Business, you know, may bring you money, but friendship hardly ever does.
Dress is at all times a frivolous distinction, and excessive solicitude about it often destroys its own aim.
Every man is surrounded by a neighborhood of voluntary spies.
Friendship is certainly the finest balm for the pangs of disappointed love.
From politics, it was an easy step to silence.
General benevolence, but not general friendship, made a man what he ought to be.
Good-humoured, unaffected girls, will not do for a man who has been used to sensible women. They are two distinct orders of being.
How quick come the reasons for approving what we like!
I cannot speak well enough to be unintelligible.
I do not want people to be very agreeable, as it saves me the trouble of liking them a great deal.
I have been a selfish being all my life, in practice, though not in principle.
If I loved you less, I might be able to talk about it more.
It is happy for you that you possess the talent of flattering with delicacy. May I ask whether these pleasing attentions proceed from the impulse of the moment, or are they the result of previous study?
It sometimes happens that a woman is handsomer at twenty-nine than she was ten years before.
It will, I believe, be everywhere found, that as the clergy are, or are not what they ought to be, so are the rest of the nation.
Let other pens dwell on guilt and misery.
Life seems but a quick succession of busy nothings.
My idea of good company is the company of clever, well-informed people who have a great deal of conversation; that is what I call good company.
Next to being married, a girl likes to be crossed in love a little now and then.
Nobody minds having what is too good for them.
Nothing is more deceitful than the appearance of humility. It is often only carelessness of opinion, and sometimes an indirect boast.
Oh! do not attack me with your watch. A watch is always too fast or too slow. I cannot be dictated to by a watch.
One does not love a place the less for having suffered in it, unless it has been all suffering, nothing but suffering.
One half of the world cannot understand the pleasures of the other.
One man’s style must not be the rule of another’s.
One man’s ways may be as good as another’s, but we all like our own best.
Respect for right conduct is felt by everybody.
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.
Surprises are foolish things. The pleasure is not enhanced, and the inconvenience is often considerable.
The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid.
There are certainly not so many men of large fortune in the world, as there are pretty women to deserve them.
There are people, who the more you do for them, the less they will do for themselves.
There is no charm equal to tenderness of heart.
There is nothing like staying at home for real comfort.
There is something so amiable in the prejudices of a young mind, that one is sorry to see them give way to the reception of more general opinions.
Those who do not complain are never pitied.
To be fond of dancing was a certain step towards falling in love.
To sit in the shade on a fine day and look upon verdure is the most perfect refreshment.
Vanity and pride are different things, though the words are often used synonymously. A person may be proud without being vain. Pride relates more to our opinion of ourselves; vanity, to what we would have others think of us.
Vanity working on a weak mind, produces every sort of mischief.
We do not look in our great cities for our best morality.
We have all a better guide in ourselves, if we would attend to it, than any other person can be.
What is right to be done cannot be done too soon.
What wild imaginations one forms where dear self is concerned! How sure to be mistaken!
Where an opinion is general, it is usually correct.
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