Jane Austen

What could I do! Facts are such horrid things!

The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel must be intolerably stupid.

A very short trial convinced her that a curricle was the prettiest equipage in the world.

It would be mortifying to the feelings of many ladies, could they be made to understand how little the heart of man is affected by what is costly or new in their attire.

...from politics, it was an easy step to silence.

Could they be perpetrated without being known, in a country like this, where social and literary intercourse is on such a footing, where every man is surrounded by a neighbourhood of voluntary spies, and where roads and newspapers lay …

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

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.

I must learn to brook being happier than I deserve.

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

A lady, without a family, was the very best preserver of furniture in the world.

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

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

Ah! there is nothing like staying at home for real comfort.

There are people who the more you do for them, the less they will do for themselves.

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

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.

...why did we wait for any thing? — why not seize the pleasure at once? — How often is happiness destroyed by preparation, foolish preparation!

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

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

Of various admirals I could tell you a great deal: of them and their flags, and the gradation of their pay, and their bickerings and jealousies. But, in general, I can assure you that they are all passed over, and all very ill used. …

But there certainly are not so many men of large fortune in the world as there are pretty women to deserve them.

It is a lovely night, and they are much to be pitied who have not been taught to feel, in some degree, as you do; who have not, at least, been given a taste for Nature in early life. They lose a great deal.

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.