Time For Jane Austen Quotes

"One man's ways may be as good as another's, but we all like our own best." Jane Austen

"Vanity working on a weak head, produces every sort of mischief." Jane Austen

"Husbands and wives generally understand when opposition will be vain." Jane Austen

"General benevolence, but not general friendship, made a man what he ought to be." Jane Austen

"To flatter and follow others, without being flattered and followed in turn, is but a state of half enjoyment." Jane Austen

"Friendship is certainly the finest balm for the pangs of disappointed love." Jane Austen

"It sometimes happens that a woman is handsomer at twenty-nine than she was ten years before." Jane Austen

"I have been a selfish being all my life, in practice, though not in principle." Jane Austen

"I cannot speak well enough to be unintelligible." Jane Austen

"I am afraid that the pleasantness of an employment does not always evince its propriety." Jane Austen

A watercolour and pencil sketch of Austen, believed to have been drawn from life by her sister Cassandra (c. 1810)

Jane Austen (16 December 1775 – 18 July 1817) was an English novelist whose works of romantic fiction, set among the landed gentry, earned her a place as one of the most widely read writers in English literature. Her realism and biting social commentary have gained her historical importance among scholars and critics.

Austen lived her entire life as part of a close-knit family located on the lower fringes of the English landed gentry. She was educated primarily by her father and older brothers as well as through her own reading. The steadfast support of her family was critical to her development as a professional writer. Her artistic apprenticeship lasted from her teenage years into her thirties. During this period, she experimented with various literary forms, including the epistolary novel which she tried then abandoned, and wrote and extensively revised three major novels and began a fourth. From 1811 until 1816, with the release of Sense and Sensibility (1811), Pride and Prejudice (1813), Mansfield Park (1814) and Emma (1816), she achieved success as a published writer. She wrote two additional novels, Northanger Abbey and Persuasion, both published posthumously in 1818, and began a third, which was eventually titled Sanditon, but died before completing it.
Read more about Jane Austen at Wikipedia

"Every man is surrounded by a neighborhood of voluntary spies." Jane Austen

"To be fond of dancing was a certain step towards falling in love." Jane Austen

"Surprises are foolish things. The pleasure is not enhanced, and the inconvenience is often considerable." Jane Austen

"A woman, especially, if she have the misfortune of knowing anything, should conceal it as well as she can." Jane Austen

"Let other pens dwell on guilt and misery." Jane Austen

"One man's style must not be the rule of another's." Jane Austen

"Happiness in marriage is entirely a matter of chance." Jane Austen

"What is right to be done cannot be done too soon." Jane Austen

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

"If I loved you less, I might be able to talk about it more." Jane Austen

"There is nothing like staying at home for real comfort." Jane Austen

"Those who do not complain are never pitied." Jane Austen

"To sit in the shade on a fine day and look upon verdure is the most perfect refreshment." Jane Austen

"If things are going untowardly one month, they are sure to mend the next." Jane Austen

"My sore throats are always worse than anyone's." Jane Austen

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

"A large income is the best recipe for happiness I ever heard of." Jane Austen

"We have all a better guide in ourselves, if we would attend to it, than any other person can be." Jane Austen

"Nobody minds having what is too good for them." Jane Austen

"We do not look in our great cities for our best morality." Jane Austen

"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." Jane Austen

"From politics, it was an easy step to silence." Jane Austen

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

"An artist cannot do anything slovenly." Jane Austen

"Where an opinion is general, it is usually correct." Jane Austen

"Selfishness must always be forgiven you know, because there is no hope of a cure." Jane Austen

"How quick come the reasons for approving what we like!" Jane Austen

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

"Dress is at all times a frivolous distinction, and excessive solicitude about it often destroys its own aim." Jane Austen

"One cannot be always laughing at a man without now and then stumbling on something witty." Jane Austen

"Single women have a dreadful propensity for being poor. Which is one very strong argument in favor of matrimony." Jane Austen

"A person who can write a long letter with ease, cannot write ill." Jane Austen

"The more I know of the world, the more I am convinced that I shall never see a man whom I can really love." Jane Austen

"I do not want people to be very agreeable, as it saves me the trouble of liking them a great deal." Jane Austen

"A mind lively and at ease, can do with seeing nothing, and can see nothing that does not answer." Jane Austen

"They are much to be pitied who have not been given a taste for nature early in life." Jane Austen

"Next to being married, a girl likes to be crossed in love a little now and then." Jane Austen

"Life seems but a quick succession of busy nothings." Jane Austen

"What wild imaginations one forms where dear self is concerned! How sure to be mistaken!" Jane Austen

"There are certainly not so many men of large fortune in the world, as there are pretty women to deserve them." Jane Austen

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

"It is always incomprehensible to a man that a woman should ever refuse an offer of marriage." Jane Austen

"There is no charm equal to tenderness of heart." Jane Austen

"One half of the world cannot understand the pleasures of the other." Jane Austen

"In nine cases out of ten, a woman had better show more affection than she feels." Jane Austen

"Respect for right conduct is felt by every body." Jane Austen

"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." Jane Austen

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

"There are people, who the more you do for them, the less they will do for themselves." Jane Austen