Quotes by Jane Austen

Pride has often been his best friend. It has connected him nearer with virtue than any other feeling.

Completely and perfectly and incandescently happy...

Pride is a very common failing, I believe. By all that I have ever read, I am convinced that it is very common indeed; that human nature is particularly prone to it, and that there are very few of us who do not cherish a feeling of self-complacency on the score of some quality or other, real or imaginary.

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

Her tears fell abundantly--but her grief was so truly artless, that no dignity could have made it more respectable in Emmas eyes--and she listened to her and tried to console her with all her heart and understanding--really for the time convinced that Harriet was the superior creature of the two--and that to resemble her would be more for her own welfare and happiness than all that genius or intelligence could do.It was rather too late in the day to set about being simple-minded and ignorant; but she left her with every previous resolution confirmed of being humble and discreet, and repressing imagination all the rest of her life.

When the evening was over, Anne could not but be amused at the idea of her coming to Lyme, to preach patience and resignation to a young man whom she had never seen before; nor could she help fearing, on more serious reflection, that, like many other great moralists and preachers, she had been eloquent on a point in which her own conduct would ill bear examination.

Anne did think on the question with perfect decision, and said as much in replay as her own feelings could accomplish, or as his seemed able to bear, for he was too much affected to renew the subject - and when he spoke again, it was something totally different.

Whenever you are transplanted, like me, you will understand how very delightful it is to meet with anything at all like what one has left behind.

I do not wish to avoid the walk. The distance is nothing when one has a motive.

You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope...I have loved none but you.

The I examined my own heart. And there you were. Never, I fear, to be removed.

Upon my word, Emma, to hear you abusing the reason you have, is almost enough to make me think so too. Better be without sense than misapply it as you do.

…she had no resources for solitude…

Mr. Collins was to attend them, at the request of Mr. Bennet, who was most anxious to get rid of him, and have his library to himself

Shall I ask you how the church is to be filled, if a man is neither to take orders with a living, nor without?

Think only of the past as its remembrance gives you pleasure

If I am wrong, I am doing what I believe to the right.

... his second... must give him the pleasantest proof of its being a great deal better to choose than to be chosen, to excite gratitude than to feel it.

With this answer Elizabeth was forced to be content; but her own opinion continued the same, and she left disappointed and sorry. It was not in her nature, however, to increase her vexations by dwelling on them. She was confident of having performed her duty, and to fret over unavoidable evils, or augment them by anxiety, was no part of her disposition.

To avoid a comparative poverty, which her affection and her society would have deprived of all its horrors, I have, by raising myself to affluence, lost everything that could make it a blessing.