Jane Austen (1775-1817)

Quotes

• I always deserve the best treatment because I never put up with any other.

• At my time of life opinions are tolerably fixed. It is not likely that I should now see or hear anything to change them.

• Silly things do cease to be silly if they are done by sensible people in an impudent way.

• 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 on his first entering a neighbourhood, this truth is so well fixed in the minds of ths surrounding families, that he is considered as the rightful property of some one or other of their daughters.

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

• In all the important preparations of the mind she was complete: being prepared for matrimony by an hatred of home, restraint, and tranquillity; by the misery of disappointed affection, and contempt of the man she was to marry.

• We all know him to be a proud, unpleasant sort of a man; but this would be nothing if you really liked him.

• "Only a novel"... in short, 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.

• You have delighted us long enough.

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

• It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man 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.

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

• Wisdom is better than wit, and in the long run will certainly have the laugh on her side.

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

• Seldom, very seldom, does complete truth belong to any human disclosure; seldom can it happen that something is not a little disguised, or a little mistaken.

• Life is just a quick succession of busy nothings.

• Think only of the past as its remembrance gives you pleasure.

• When any two young people take it into their heads to marry, they are pretty sure by perseverance to carry their point, be they ever so poor, or ever so imprudent, or ever so little likely to be necessary to each other's ultimate comfort.

• A lady's imagination is very rapid; it jumps from admiration to love, from love to matrimony in a moment.