Jane Austen was an English novelist known primarily for her six major novels, which interpret, critiqued, and commented upon the British landed gentry at the end of the 18th century.
Austen’s plots often explore the dependence of women on marriage in the pursuit of favorable social standing and economic security. Her works critique the novels of sensibility of the second half of the 18th century and are part of the transition to 19th-century literary realism.
Her use of biting irony, along with her realism and social commentary, has earned her acclaim among critics and scholars.
List of quotes
| A woman, especially, if she have the misfortune of knowing anything, should conceal it as well as she can. |
| Friendship is certainly the finest balm for the pangs of disappointed love. |
| Where youth and diffidence are united, it requires uncommon steadiness of reason to resist the attraction of being called the most charming girl in the world. |
| Happiness in marriage is entirely a matter of chance. |
| Where an opinion is general, it is usually correct. |
| Good-humoured, unaffected girls, will not do for a man who has been used to sensible women. They are two distinct orders of being. |
| What wild imaginations one forms where dear self is concerned! How sure to be mistaken! |
| Give a girl an education and introduce her properly into the world, and ten to one but she has the means of settling well, without further expense to anybody. |
| General benevolence, but not general friendship, made a man what he ought to be. |
| From politics, it was an easy step to silence. |
| For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbors and laugh at them in our turn? |
| Every man is surrounded by a neighborhood of voluntary spies. |
| Dress is at all times a frivolous distinction, and excessive solicitude about it often destroys its own aim. |
| Business, you know, may bring you money, but friendship hardly ever does. |
| 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. |
| An artist cannot do anything slovenly. |
| A person who can write a long letter with ease, cannot write ill. |
| A mind lively and at ease, can do with seeing nothing, and can see nothing that does not answer. |
| A large income is the best recipe for happiness I ever heard of. |
| A lady’s imagination is very rapid; it jumps from admiration to love, from love to matrimony in a moment. |
| How quick come the reasons for approving what we like! |
| 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. |
| Husbands and wives generally understand when opposition will be vain. |
| 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. |
| It sometimes happens that a woman is handsomer at twenty-nine than she was ten years before. |
| 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 is always incomprehensible to a man that a woman should ever refuse an offer of marriage. |
| It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife. |
| If things are going untowardly one month, they are sure to mend the next. |
| If I loved you less, I might be able to talk about it more. |
| I have been a selfish being all my life, in practice, though not in principle. |
| I do not want people to be very agreeable, as it saves me the trouble of liking them a great deal. |
| I am afraid that the pleasantness of an employment does not always evince its propriety. |
| Human nature is so well disposed towards those who are in interesting situations, that a young person, who either marries or dies, is sure of being kindly spoken of. |
| I cannot speak well enough to be unintelligible. |
| Men have had every advantage of us in 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 anything. |
| There is no charm equal to tenderness of heart. |
| 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 cannot be always laughing at a man without now and then stumbling on something witty. |
| 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 every body. |
| 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. |
| Selfishness must always be forgiven you know, because there is no hope of a cure. |
| Single women have a dreadful propensity for being poor. Which is one very strong argument in favor of matrimony. |
| Surprises are foolish things. The pleasure is not enhanced, and the inconvenience is often considerable. |
| The more I know of the world, the more I am convinced that I shall never see a man whom I can really love. |
| The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid. |
| Let other pens dwell on guilt and misery. |
| To flatter and follow others, without being flattered and followed in turn, is but a state of half enjoyment. |
| What is right to be done cannot be done too soon. |
| We have all a better guide in ourselves, if we would attend to it, than any other person can be. |
| We do not look in our great cities for our best morality. |
| Vanity working on a weak head, produces every sort of mischief. |
| 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. |
| There are certainly not so many men of large fortune in the world, as there are pretty women to deserve them. |
| To look almost pretty is an acquisition of higher delight to a girl who has been looking plain for the first fifteen years of her life than a beauty from her cradle can ever receive. |
| There are people, who the more you do for them, the less they will do for themselves. |
| To be fond of dancing was a certain step towards falling in love. |
| Those who do not complain are never pitied. |
| They are much to be pitied who have not been given a taste for nature early in life. |
| 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. |
| There is nothing like staying at home for real comfort. |
| No man is offended by another man’s admiration of the woman he loves; it is the woman only who can make it a torment. |
| To sit in the shade on a fine day and look upon verdure is the most perfect refreshment. |
| Nothing is more deceitful than the appearance of humility. It is often only carelessness of opinion, and sometimes an indirect boast. |
| Next to being married, a girl likes to be crossed in love a little now and then. |
| My sore throats are always worse than anyone’s. |
| 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. |
| Nobody minds having what is too good for them. |
| Life seems but a quick succession of busy nothings. |