Jane Austen Quotes

Back to Poet Page

"A large income is the best recipe for happiness I ever heard of."

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

"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."

"Business, you know, may bring you money, but friendship hardly ever does."

"Every man is surrounded by a neighborhood of voluntary spies."

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

"From politics, it was an easy step to silence."

"Happiness in marriage is entirely a matter of chance."

"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."

"I am afraid that the pleasantness of an employment does not always evince its propriety."

"I do not want people to be very agreeable, as it saves me the trouble of liking them a great deal."

"It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man is in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife."

"It is always incomprehensible to a man that a woman should ever refuse an offer of marriage."

"It was, perhaps, one of those cases in which advice is good or bad only as the event decides."

"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."

"Let other pens dwell on guilt and misery."

"Life seems but a quick succession of busy nothings."

"Nobody can tell what I suffer! But it is always so. Those who do not complain are never pitied."

"Nobody minds having what is too good for them."

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

"One does not love a place the less for having suffered in it, unless it has been all suffering, nothing but suffering."

"One half of the world cannot understand the pleasures of the other."

"One has not great hopes from Birmingham. I always say there is something direful in the sound."

"Single women have a dreadful propensity for being poor. Which is one very strong argument in favor of matrimony."

"Surprises are foolish things. The pleasure is not enhanced, and the inconvenience is often considerable."

"There are certainly are not so many men of large fortune in the world as there are of pretty woman to deserve them."

"There is nothing like staying at home for real comfort."

"They are much to be pitied who have not been given a taste for nature early in life."

"Those who do not complain are never pitied."

"To be fond of dancing was a certain step towards falling in love."

"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."

"To sit in the shade on a fine day and look upon verdure is the most perfect refreshment."

"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."

"We do not look in our great cities for our best morality."

"We met Dr. Hall in such deep mourning that either his mother, his wife, or himself must be dead."

"What dreadful hot weather we have! It keeps me in a continual state of inelegance."

"Where an opinion is general, it is usually correct."

"Why not seize the pleasure at once? How often is happiness destroyed by preparation, foolish preparation!"

"With men he can be rational and unaffected, but when he has ladies to please, every feature works."

"You mistake me, my dear. I have a high respect for your nerves. They are my old friends. I have heard you mention them with consideration these twenty years at least."

View Jane Austen:  Poems | Quotes | Biography | Books

Copyright © 2006 - 2010 Famous Poets And Poems . com. All Rights Reserved.
The Poems and Quotes on this site are the property of their respective authors. All information has been
reproduced here for educational and informational purposes.