Jane Austen Quotes

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

Reflection must be reserved for solitary hours; whenever she was alone, she gave way to it as the greatest relief; and not a day went by without a solitary walk, in which she might indulge in all the delight of unpleasant recollections.

It is not every man's fate to marry the woman who loves him best

I speak what appears to me the general opinion; and where an opinion is general, it is usually correct.

Every moment has its pleasures and its hope.

It was told to me, it was in a manner forced on me by the very person herself whose prior engagement ruined all my prospects, and told me, as I thought, with triumph. This person's suspicions, therefore, I have had to oppose by endeavouring to appear indifferent where I have been most deeply interested; and it has not been only once; I have had her hopes and exultations to listen to again and again. I have known myself to be divided from Edward forever, without hearing one circumstance that could make me less desire the connection. Nothing has proved him unworthy; nor has anything declared him indifferent to me. I have had to content against the unkindness of his sister and the insolence of his mother, and have suffered the punishment of an attachment without enjoying its advantages. And all this has been going on at the time when, as you too well know, it has not been my only unhappiness. If you can think me capable of ever feeling, surely you may suppose that I have suffered now.

You deserve a longer letter than this; but it is my unhappy fate seldom to treat people so well as they deserve.

It is not what we think or feel that makes us who we are. It is what we do. Or fail to do...

She began now to comprehend that he was exactly the man who, in disposition and talents, would most suit her. His understanding and temper, though unlike her own, would have answered all her wishes. It was an union that must have been to the advantage of both: by her ease and liveliness, his mind might have been softened, his manners improved; and from his judgement, information, and knowledge of the world, she must have received benefit of greater importance.

She felt that she could so much more depend upon the sincerity of those who sometimes looked or said a careless or a hasty thing, than of those whose presence of mind never varied, whose tongue never slipped.

"Oh!" cried Anne eagerly, "I hope I do justice to all that is felt by you,
and by those who resemble you. God forbid that I should undervalue
the warm and faithful feelings of any of my fellow-creatures!
I should deserve utter contempt if I dared to suppose that true attachment
and constancy were known only by woman. No, I believe you capable
of everything great and good in your married lives. I believe you equal
to every important exertion, and to every domestic forbearance,
so long as — if I may be allowed the expression — so long as you have
an object. I mean while the woman you love lives, and lives for you.
All the privilege I claim for my own sex (it is not a very enviable one;
you need not covet it), is that of loving longest, when existence
or when hope is gone."

Mr. Knightley, if I have not spoken, it is because I am afraid I will awaken myself from this dream.

A woman especially, if she has the misfortune of knowing anything, should conceal it as well as she can.

Let us never underestimate the power of a well-written letter.

Pray, pray be composed, and do not betray what you feel to every body present