Jane Austen Quotes

“General benevolence, but not general friendship, made a man what he ought to be.”

“The truth is, that in London it is always a sickly season. Nobody is healthy in London, nobody can be.”

“To yield readily--easily--to the persuasion of a friend is no merit.... To yield without conviction is no compliment to the understanding of either.”

“May I ask you what these questions tend?' 'Merely to the illustration of your character,' said she, endeavouring to shake off her gravity. 'I am trying to make it out.' 'And what is your success?' She shook her head. 'I do not get on at all. I hear such different accounts of you as puzzle me exceedingly.”

“It is this delightful habit of journalizing which largely contributes to form the easy style of writing for which ladies are so generally celebrated. Every body allows that the talent of writing is particularly female. Nature might have done something, but I am sure it must be essentially assisted by the practice of keeping a journal.”

“Is not poetry the food of love?”

“I cannot help thinking that it is more natural to have flowers grow out of the head than fruit.”

“It's been many years since I had such an exemplary vegetable.”

“The little bit (two inches wide) of ivory on which I work with so fine a brush as produces little effect after much labour.”

“I have now attained the true art of letter-writing, which we are always told, is to express on paper exactly what one would say to the same person by word of mouth.”

“Where the wound had been given, there must the cure be found, if any where.”

“I have no talent for certainty.”

“There is hardly any personal defect... which an agreeable manner might not gradually reconcile one to.”

“Mr. Darcy began to feel the danger of paying Elizabeth too much attention.”

“Those who have not more must be satisfied with what they have.”

“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.”

“The post office has a great charm at one point of our lives. When you have lived to my age, you will begin to think letters are never worth going through the rain for.”

“I should not mind anything at all.”

“I wish, as well as everybody else, to be perfectly happy; but, like everybody else, it must be in my own way.”

“I particularly recollect your saying one night, after they had been dining at Netherfield, 'SHE a beauty!--I should as soon call her mother a wit.' But afterwards she seemed to improve on you, and I believe you thought her rather pretty at one time." "Yes," replied Darcy, who could contain himself no longer, "but THAT was only when I first saw her, for it is many months since I have considered her as one of the handsomest women of my acquaintance.”

“One does not love a place the less for having suffered in it, unless it has been all suffering, nothing but suffering.”

“I am rather impatient to know the fate of my best gown.”

“But to live in ignorance on such a point was impossible.”

“The less said the better.”

“Your countenance perfectly informs me that you were in company last night with the person, whom you think the most agreeable in the world, the person who interests you at this present time, more than all the rest of the world put together.”