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
In nine cases out of ten, a woman had better show more affection than she feels.
—Jane Austen
Topics: Love, Affection
Nobody can tell what I suffer! But it is always so. Those who do not complain are never pitied.
—Jane Austen
Topics: Pessimism, Complaining, Sympathy, Problems, Complaints
Where an opinion is general, it is usually correct.
—Jane Austen
Topics: Opinions, Public opinion, Opinion
Business, you know, may bring you money, but friendship hardly ever does.
—Jane Austen
Topics: Business, Money, Friendship
It is always incomprehensible to a man that a woman should ever refuse an offer of marriage.
—Jane Austen
Topics: Marriage
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
There is nothing like staying at home for real comfort.
—Jane Austen
Topics: Home
With men he can be rational and unaffected, but when he has ladies to please, every feature works.
—Jane Austen
Topics: Women, Men & Women, Men, Men and Women
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.
—Jane Austen
Topics: Fiction, Authors & Writing
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.
—Jane Austen
Topics: Religion, Churches
In every power, of which taste is the foundation, excellence is pretty fairly divided among the sexes.
—Jane Austen
Topics: Excellence
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
Surprises are foolish things. The pleasure is not enhanced and the inconvenience is often considerable.
—Jane Austen
To sit in the shade on a fine day, and look upon verdure is the most perfect refreshment.
—Jane Austen
Topics: Nature
There is not the hundredth part of the wine consumed in this kingdom that there ought to be. Our foggy climate wants help
—Jane Austen
Topics: Wine
Grant us grace, Almighty Father, so to pray as to deserve to be heard.
—Jane Austen
Topics: Prayer
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: Fortune, Men & Women, Family
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
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
Friendship is the finest balm for the pangs of despised love.
—Jane Austen
Topics: Friendship
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
Single women have a dreadful propensity for being poor. Which is one very strong argument in favor of matrimony.
—Jane Austen
Topics: Women
Happiness in marriage is entirely a matter of chance.
—Jane Austen
Topics: Marriage
I am afraid that the pleasantness of an employment does not always evince its propriety.
—Jane Austen
Topics: Work
I have been a selfish being all my life, in practice, though not in principle.
—Jane Austen
Topics: Principles, Selfishness
To be fond of dancing was a certain step towards falling in love.
—Jane Austen
Topics: Dance, Dancing
Let other pens dwell on guilt and misery.
—Jane Austen
Topics: Optimism
There are certainly are not so many men of large fortune in the world as there are of pretty woman to deserve them.
—Jane Austen
Topics: Men, Men & Women, Women, Men and Women
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
- Virginia Woolf English Novelist
- Pamela Hansford Johnson English Novelist
- Mary Webb English Novelist
- Letitia Elizabeth Landon English Poet, Novelist
- P. G. Wodehouse English Novelist
- D. H. Lawrence English Novelist
- Iris Murdoch British Novelist, Philosopher
- William Makepeace Thackeray English Novelist
- Anthony Trollope English Novelist
- Samuel Richardson English Novelist
Leave a Reply