Jane Austen

“Run mad as often as you choose, but do not faint!”

“Stupid men are the only ones worth knowing after all.”

“Angry people are not always wise.”

“[I]t is well to have as many holds upon happiness as possible.”

“One man's ways may be as good as another's, but we all like our own best.”

“Miss Morland, no one can think more highly of the understanding of women than I do. In my opinion, nature has given them so much, that they never find it necessary to use more than half.”

“she was oppressed, she was overcome by her own felicity; and happily disposed as is the human mind to be easily familiarized with any change for the better, it required several hours to give sedateness to her spirits, or any degree of tranquillity to her heart.”

“Elinor could sit still no longer. She almost ran out of the room, and as soon as the door was closed, burst into tears of joy, which at first she thought would never cease.”

“I cannot make speeches, Emma...If I loved you less, I might be able to talk about it more. But you know what I am. You hear nothing but truth from me. I have blamed you, and lectured you, and you have borne it as no other woman in England would have borne it.”

“A woman, especially if she have the misfortune of knowing anything, should conceal it as well as she can.”

“A large income is the best recipe for happiness I ever heard of.”

“The more I know of the world, the more I am convinced that I shall never see a man whom I can really love. I require so much!”

“It would be mortifying to the feelings of many ladies, could they be made to understand how little the heart of a man is affected by what is costly or new in their attire... Woman is fine for her own satisfaction alone. No man will admire her the more, no woman will like her the better for it. Neatness and fashion are enough for the former, and a something of shabbiness or impropriety will be most endearing to the latter.”

“He is a gentleman, and I am a gentleman's daughter. So far we are equal.”

“Do not give way to useless alarm; though it is right to be prepared for the worst, there is no occasion to look on it as certain.”

“You must learn some of my philosophy. Think only of the past as its remembrance gives you pleasure.”

“Elinor agreed to it all, for she did not think he deserved the compliment of rational opposition.”

“Friendship is certainly the finest balm for the pangs of disappointed love.”

“From all that I can collect by your manner of talking, you must be two of the silliest girls in the country. I have suspected it some time, but I am now convinced.”

“His own enjoyment, or his own ease, was, in every particular, his ruling principle.”

“It is only a novel... 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”

“Single women have a dreadful propensity for being poor...which is one very strong argument in favour of matrimony...Quote from a Jane Austen Letter 13 March, 1817”

“the Musgroves had had the ill fortune of a very troublesome, hopeless son, and the good fortune to lose him before he reached his twentieth year.”

“They gave themselves up wholly to their sorrow, seeking increase of wretchedness in every reflection that could afford it, and resolved against ever admitting consolation in future. ”

“A man does not recover from such devotion of the heart to such a woman! He ought not; he does not.”

“I can listen no longer in silence. I must speak to you by such means as are within my reach. You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope. Tell me not that I am too late, that such precious feelings are gone for ever. I offer myself to you again with a heart even more your own than when you almost broke it, eight years and a half ago. Dare not say that man forgets sooner than woman, that his love has an earlier death. I have loved none but you. Unjust I may have been, weak and resentful I have been, but never inconstant. You alone have brought me to Bath. For you alone, I think and plan. Have you not seen this? Can you fail to have understood my wishes? I had not waited even these ten days, could I have read your feelings, as I think you must have penetrated mine. I can hardly write. I am every instant hearing something which overpowers me. You sink your voice, but I can distinguish the tones of that voice when they would be lost on others. Too good, too excellent creature! You do us justice, indeed. You do believe that there is true attachment and constancy among men. Believe it to be most fervent, most undeviating, in F. W.I must go, uncertain of my fate; but I shall return hither, or follow your party, as soon as possible. A word, a look, will be enough to decide whether I enter your father's house this evening or never.”

“I always deserve the best treatment because I never put up with any other.”

“I declare after all there is no enjoyment like reading! How much sooner one tires of any thing than of a book! -- When I have a house of my own, I shall be miserable if I have not an excellent library.”

“What are men to rocks and mountains?”

“Indeed, I am very sorry to be right in this instance. I would much rather have been merry than wise.”

“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.”

“The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid.”

“A lady's imagination is very rapid; it jumps from admiration to love, from love to matrimony in a moment.”

“I am only resolved to act in that manner, which will, in my own opinion, constitute my happiness, without reference to you, or to any person so wholly unconnected with me.”

“Cold-hearted Elinor! Oh! Worse than cold-hearted! Ashamed of being otherwise.”

“In vain have I struggled. It will not do. My feelings will not be repressed. You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you.”

“From the very beginning— from the first moment, I may almost say— of my acquaintance with you, your manners, impressing me with the fullest belief of your arrogance, your conceit, and your selfish disdain of the feelings of others, were such as to form the groundwork of disapprobation on which succeeding events have built so immovable a dislike; and I had not known you a month before I felt that you were the last man in the world whom I could ever be prevailed on to marry.”

“For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbors, and laugh at them in our turn?”

“It is not everyone,' said Elinor, 'who has your passion for dead leaves.”

“There are few people whom I really love, and still fewer of whom I think well. 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 merit or sense.”

“Silly things do cease to be silly if they are done by sensible people in an impudent way.”

“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.”