1,664 Quotes by Jane Austen

Do you compare your conduct with his?""No. I compare it with what it ought to have been; I compare it with yours.

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.

In books too, as well as in music, she courted the misery which a contrast between the past and present was certain of giving.

To understand, thoroughly understand her own heart, was the first endeavour.

the only source whence any thing like consolation or composure could be drawn, was in the resolution of her own better conduct, and the hope that, however inferior in spirit and gaiety might be the following and every future winter of her life to the past, it would yet find her more rational, more acquainted with herself, and leave her less to regret when it were gone.

There was a great deal of good sense in all this; but there are some situations of human mind in which good sense has very little power; and Catherine's feelings contradicted almost every position her mother advanced.

cabbage-beds would have been enough to tempt the lady, who only wanted to be going somewhere.

No one who had ever seen Catherine Morland in her infancy would have supposed her to be born a heroine.

But think no more of the letter. The feelings of the person who wrote, and the person who received it, are now so widely different from what they were then, that every unpleasant circumstance attending it ought to be forgotten. You must learn some of my philosophy. Think only of the past as its remembrance gives you pleasure.