Explore Quotes by Jane Austen

I mean to be too rich to lament or to feel anything of the sort. A large income is the best recipe for happiness I ever heard of. It certainly may secure all the myrtle and turkey part of it.

A lucky guess is never merely luck. There is always some talent in it.

Facts or opinions which are to pass through the hands of so many, to be misconceived by folly in one, and ignorance in another, can hardly have much truth left.

Then it would not be so strong a sense. If it failed to produce equal exertion, it could not be an equal conviction.

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

My sore throats are always worse than anyone's.

An artist cannot do anything slovenly.

I do not like to have people throw themselves away; but everybody should marry as soon as they can do it to advantage.

I declare after all there is no enjoyment like reading!

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

In a letter from Bath to her sister, Cassandra, one senses her frustration at her sheltered existence, Tuesday, 12 May 1801. Another stupid party . . . with six people to look on, and talk nonsense to each other.

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

It is indolence... Indolence and love of ease; a want of all laudable ambition, of taste for good company, or of inclination to take the trouble of being agreeable, which make men clergymen. A clergyman has nothing to do but be slovenly and selfish; read the newspaper, watch the weather, and quarrel with his wife. His curate does all the work and the business of his own life is to dine.

A Woman never looks better than on horseback

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

The sooner every party breaks up the better.

There is not the hundredth part of the wine consumed in this kingdom that there ought to be. Our foggy climate wants help.

One cannot fix one's eyes on the commonest natural production without finding food for a rambling fancy.

Almost anything is possible with time

I pay very little regard...to what any young person says on the subject of marriage. If they profess a disinclination for it, I only set it down that they have not yet seen the right person.

He then departed, to make himself still more interesting, in the midst of a heavy rain.