Jane Austen (1775–1817) was a English novelist who wrote such celebrated novels Sense and Sensibility (1811,) Pride and Prejudice (1813,) Mansfield Park (1814,) Emma (1815,) and Persuasion (1818.) The latter, together with the earlier Northanger Abbey (begun in 1798,) were published after her death.
Austen was born into the English gentry, whose customs feature prominently in her novels. She shared a room for her whole life with her older sister Cassandra. Neither of them ever married. Not much is known about Jane’s life beyond minor details recorded in the letters that have survived—Cassandra burned or edited most of Jane’s correspondence. Jane had no personal acquaintance with any other prominent writer.
At the focal point of all of Austen’s novels is the complicated maneuvering that leads to marriage. Austen considers marriage not as a dull romantic climax, but as a complex moral and social conciliation that exposes much about human nature and frailty by substituting mental clarity and good judgment with idealization and self-deception. In Sense and Sensibility, her first book, Austen attempts to make sense of the discord between demands of heart and head. In Pride and Prejudice, Austen’s best-known novel, protagonist Elizabeth Bennet realizes how appearances could mislead, and what she could learn from recognizing the prejudices of the observer.
Austen died at 42, probably of Addison’s disease, lymphoma, or—as has been recently alleged—arsenic poisoning.
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Jane Austen
That sanguine expectation of happiness which is happiness itself.
—Jane Austen
Topics: Happiness
It is always incomprehensible to a man that a woman should ever refuse an offer of marriage.
—Jane Austen
Topics: Marriage
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife. However little known the feelings or views of such a man may be on his first entering a neighbourhood, this truth is so well fixed in the minds of the surrounding families, that he is considered as the rightful property of someone or other of their daughters.
—Jane Austen
Topics: Family, Men & Women, Fortune
For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbors, and laugh at them in our turn?
—Jane Austen
Topics: Neighbors, Sports
Where a man does his best with only moderate powers, he will have the advantage over negligent superiority.
—Jane Austen
Topics: Power
I am afraid that the pleasantness of an employment does not always evince its propriety.
—Jane Austen
Topics: Work
They are much to be pitied who have not been … given a taste for nature early in life.
—Jane Austen
Topics: Nature
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.
—Jane Austen
Topics: Letters
I have been a selfish being all my life, in practice, though not in principle.
—Jane Austen
Topics: Selfishness, Principles
Walter Scott has no business to write novels, especially good ones. He has fame and profit enough as a poet, and should not be taking the bread out of other people’s mouths.
—Jane Austen
Topics: Writing
Life seems but a quick succession of busy nothings.
—Jane Austen
Topics: Life, Busy
Nothing is more deceitful than the appearance of humility. It is often only carelessness of opinion, and sometimes an indirect boast.
—Jane Austen
Topics: Humility
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.
—Jane Austen
To be fond of dancing was a certain step towards falling in love.
—Jane Austen
Topics: Dancing, Dance
From politics it was an easy step to silence.
—Jane Austen
Topics: Silence
With men he can be rational and unaffected, but when he has ladies to please, every feature works.
—Jane Austen
Topics: Men & Women, Men and Women, Women, Men
There will be little rubs and disappointments everywhere, and we are all apt to expect too much; but then, if one scheme of happiness fails, human nature turns to another; if the first calculation is wrong, we make a second better: we find comfort somewhere.
—Jane Austen
Topics: Disappointment
Where an opinion is general, it is usually correct.
—Jane Austen
Topics: Opinions, Public opinion, Opinion
Vanity working on a weak head, produces every sort of mischief.
—Jane Austen
Topics: Vanity
Surprises are foolish things. The pleasure is not enhanced and the inconvenience is often considerable.
—Jane Austen
We have all a better guide in ourselves, if we would attend to it, than any other person can be.
—Jane Austen
Topics: Self-Discovery
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 the result of previous study?
—Jane Austen
Topics: Flattery
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.
—Jane Austen
Topics: Judges, Judgment, Judging
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.
—Jane Austen
Topics: Women
Friendship is the finest balm for the pangs of despised love.
—Jane Austen
Topics: Friendship
The memory is sometimes so retentive, so serviceable, so obedient-at others so bewildered and weak-and at others again, so tyrannic, so beyond control!
—Jane Austen
Topics: Memory
In vain have I struggled, it will not do. You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you.
—Jane Austen
Topics: Love, Pride, Will
And I, Mr. Knightley, am equally stout in my confidence of its not doing them any harm. With all dear Emma’s little faults, she is an excellent creature. Where shall we see a better daughter, or a kinder sister, or a truer friend? No, no; she has qualities which may be trusted; she will never lead any one really wrong; she will make no lasting blunder; where Emma errs once, she is in the right a hundred times.
—Jane Austen
Topics: Loyalty
A woman, especially, if she have the misfortune of knowing anything, should conceal it as well as she can.
—Jane Austen
Topics: Fortune, Women, Misfortunes
Nobody can tell what I suffer! But it is always so. Those who do not complain are never pitied.
—Jane Austen
Topics: Pessimism, Complaints, Sympathy, Complaining, Problems
To flatter and follow others, without being flattered and followed in turn, is but a state of half enjoyment.
—Jane Austen
Topics: Enjoyment
Single women have a dreadful propensity for being poor. Which is one very strong argument in favor of matrimony.
—Jane Austen
Topics: Women
The younger brother must help to pay for the pleasures of the elder.
—Jane Austen
Topics: Brothers
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.
—Jane Austen
Topics: Marriage
There is safety in reserve, but no attraction. One cannot love a reserved person.
—Jane Austen
Topics: Safety
Let other pens dwell on guilt and misery.
—Jane Austen
Topics: Optimism
In every power, of which taste is the foundation, excellence is pretty fairly divided among the sexes.
—Jane Austen
Topics: Excellence
History, real solemn history, I cannot be interested in. I read it a little as a duty; but it tells me nothing that does not either vex or weary me. The quarrels of popes and kings, with wars and pestilence in every page; the men so good for nothing, and hardly any women at all.
—Jane Austen
Topics: History
She had been forced into prudence in her youth, she learned romance as she grew older – the natural sequence of an unnatural beginning.
—Jane Austen
Topics: Romance
One does not love a place the less for having suffered in it, unless it has been all suffering, nothing but suffering.
—Jane Austen
Topics: Travel
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