Quotes by Jane Austen

I am no novel-reader -- I seldom look into novels -- Do not imagine that I often read novels -- It is really very well for a novel. Such is the common cant. And what are you reading, Miss -- ? Oh! It is only a novel! replies the young lady, while she lays down her book with affected indifference, or momentary shame. It is only Cecilia, or Camilla, or Belinda; or, in short, only some work in which the greatest powers of the mind are displayed, in which the most thorough knowledge of human nature, the happiest delineation of its varieties, the liveliest effusions of wit and humour, are conveyed to the world in the best-chosen language.

There is a stubbornness about me that never can bear to be frightened at the will of others. My courage always rises at every attempt to intimidate me.

Which of all my important nothings shall I tell you first?

Business, you know, may bring money, but friendship hardly ever does.

My idea of good company, Mr Elliot, is the company of clever, well-informed people, who have a great deal of conversation; that is what I call good company.You are mistaken, said he gently, that is not good company; that is the best. Good company requires only birth, education, and manners (...)

You are in a melancholy humour, and fancy that any one unlike yourself must be happy. But remember that the pain of parting from friends will be felt by every body at times, whatever be their education or state. Know your own happiness. You want nothing but patience — or give it a more fascinating name, call it hope.

You feel, I suppose, that, in losing Isabella, you lose half yourself: you feel a void in your heart which nothing else can occupy.  Society is becoming irksome; and as for the amusements in which you were wont to share at Bath, the very idea of which without her is abhorrent.  You would not, for instance, now go to a ball for the world.  You feel that you have no longer any friend to whom you can speak with unreserve; on whose regard you can place dependence; or whose counsel, in any difficult, you could rely on.

Elizabeth could never address her without feeling that all the comfort of intimacy was over, and, though determined not to slacken as a correspondent, it was for the sake of what had been, rather than what was.

Oh! you are a great deal too apt, you know, to like people in general. You never see fault in any body. All the world are good and agreeable in your eyes. I never heard you speak ill of a human being in my life.I would wish not to be hasty in censuring any one; but I always speak what I think.

But one never does form a just idea of anybody beforehand. One takes up a notion and runs away with it.

To wish was to hope, and to hope was to expect.

It was absolutely necessary to interrupt him now.

Every man is surrounded by a neighborhood of voluntary spies.

She was nothing more than a mere good-tempered, civil and obliging Young Woman; as such we could scarcely dislike her -- she was only an Object of Contempt

... and because they were fond of reading, she fancied them satirical: perhaps without exactly knowing what it was to be satirical; but that did not signify. It was censure in common use, and easily given.

For my part, I am determined never to speak of it again to anybody. I told my sister Phillips so the other day.

I have not yet tranquillised myself enough to see Frederica.

I hate to hear you talk about all women as if they were fine ladies instead of rational creatures. None of us want to be in calm waters all our lives.

She was sensible and clever, but eager in everything; her sorrows, her joys, could have no moderation.

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife. However little known the feelings or views of such a man may be on his first entering a neighbourhood, this truth is so well fixed in the minds of the surrounding families, that he is considered as the rightful property of someone or other of their daughters.