Inspirational Quotations

Inspirational Quotes by Jane Austen (English Novelist)

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

Where a man does his best with only moderate powers, he will have the advantage over negligent superiority.
—Jane Austen
Topics: Power

Every man is surrounded by a neighborhood of voluntary spies.
—Jane Austen
Topics: Neighbors

They are much to be pitied who have not been … given a taste for nature early in life.
—Jane Austen
Topics: Nature

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

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.
—Jane Austen
Topics: Pride, Vanity

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: Judgment, Judges, Judging

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

To sit in the shade on a fine day, and look upon verdure is the most perfect refreshment.
—Jane Austen
Topics: Nature

There is nothing like staying at home for real comfort.
—Jane Austen
Topics: Home

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 and Women, Men & Women, Men, Women

There is safety in reserve, but no attraction. One cannot love a reserved person.
—Jane Austen
Topics: Safety

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

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

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

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

Business, you know, may bring you money, but friendship hardly ever does.
—Jane Austen
Topics: Money, Friendship, Business

It is always incomprehensible to a man that a woman should ever refuse an offer of marriage.
—Jane Austen
Topics: Marriage

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

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

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, Fortune, Men & Women

What dreadful hot weather we have! It keeps me in a continual state of inelegance.
—Jane Austen
Topics: Weather

I declare after all there is no enjoyment like reading! How much sooner one tires of anything than of a book! When I have a house of my own, I shall be miserable if I have not an excellent library.
—Jane Austen
Topics: Reading

I am afraid that the pleasantness of an employment does not always evince its propriety.
—Jane Austen
Topics: Work

It may be possible to do without dancing entirely. Instances have been known of young people passing many, many months successively without being at any ball of any description, and no material injury accrue either to body or mind; but when a beginning is made—when the felicities of rapid motion have once been, though slightly, felt—it must be a very heavy set that does not ask for more.
—Jane Austen
Topics: Dance, Dancing

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

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: Will, Pride, Love

The younger brother must help to pay for the pleasures of the elder.
—Jane Austen
Topics: Brothers

Why not seize the pleasure at once? How often is happiness destroyed by preparation, foolish preparation?
—Jane Austen

Let us leave it to the reviewers to abuse such effusions of fancy at their leisure, and over every new novel to talk in threadbare strains of the trash with which the press now groans. Let us not desert one another; we are an injured body.
—Jane Austen

In nine cases out of ten, a woman had better show more affection than she feels.
—Jane Austen
Topics: Affection, Love

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