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

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

A woman, especially, if she have the misfortune of knowing anything, should conceal it as well as she can.
—Jane Austen
Topics: Women, Fortune, Misfortunes

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

With men he can be rational and unaffected, but when he has ladies to please, every feature works.
—Jane Austen
Topics: Women, Men, Men & Women, 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

In every power, of which taste is the foundation, excellence is pretty fairly divided among the sexes.
—Jane Austen
Topics: Excellence

I have been a selfish being all my life, in practice, though not in principle.
—Jane Austen
Topics: Principles, Selfishness

Happiness in marriage is entirely a matter of chance.
—Jane Austen
Topics: Marriage

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

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

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

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

Friendship is the finest balm for the pangs of despised love.
—Jane Austen
Topics: Friendship

It is indolence… Indolence and love of ease; a want of all laudable ambition, of taste for good company, or of inclination to take the trouble of being agreeable, which make men clergymen. A clergyman has nothing to do but be slovenly and selfish; read the newspaper, watch the weather, and quarrel with his wife. His curate does all the work and the business of his own life is to dine.
—Jane Austen
Topics: Churches, Religion

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

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

For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbors, and laugh at them in our turn?
—Jane Austen
Topics: Sports, Neighbors

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

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

That sanguine expectation of happiness which is happiness itself.
—Jane Austen
Topics: Happiness

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: Vanity, Pride

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

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

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

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

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, Judging, Judges

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

Life seems but a quick succession of busy nothings.
—Jane Austen
Topics: Life, Busy

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

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

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