1,664 Quotes by Jane Austen

We have all a better guide in ourselves, if we would attend to it, than any other person can be.

I know he will make you happy, but you will make him everything.

Nothing was so likely to do her good as a little quiet cheerfulness at home.

I have no pleasure in seeing my friends, unless I can believe myself fit to be seen.

She will never submit to any thing requiring industry and patience, and a subjection of the fancy to the understanding.

To be so bent on Marriage - to pursue a man merely for the sake of situation - is a sort of thing that shocks me; I cannot understand it. Poverty is a great Evil, but to a woman of Education and feeling it ought not, it cannot be the greatest. I would rather be a teacher at a school (and I can think of nothing worse) than marry a man I did not like.

At first sight, his address is certainly not striking; and his person can hardly be called handsome, till the expression of his eyes, which are uncommonly good, and the general sweetness of his countenance, is perceived.

Her husband was really deserving of her; independent of his peerage, his wealth, and his attachment, being to a precision the most charming young man in the world. Any further definition of his merits must be unnecessary; the most charming young man in the world is instantly before the imagination of us all.

My illness, I well knew, had been entirely brought on by myself by such negligence of my own health, as I had felt even at the time to be wrong. Had I died, it would have been self-destruction.