Jane Austen Literature Quotations

Where youth and diffidence are united, it requires uncommon steadiness of reason to resist the attraction of being called the most charming girl in the world.

An engaged woman is always more agreeable than a disengaged. She is satisfied with herself. Her cares are over, and she feels that she may exert all her powers of pleasing without suspicion. All is safe with a lady engaged; no harm can be done.

If things are going untowardly one month, they are sure to mend the next.

Dress is at all times a frivolous distinction, and excessive solicitude about it often destroys its own aim.

If I loved you less, I might be able to talk about it more.

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

To flatter and follow others, without being flattered and followed in turn, is but a state of half enjoyment.

The more I know of the world, the more I am convinced that I shall never see a man whom I can really love.

One man's ways may be as good as another's, but we all like our own best.

Husbands and wives generally understand when opposition will be vain.

We do not look in our great cities for our best morality.

Where an opinion is general, it is usually correct.

I cannot speak well enough to be unintelligible.

What wild imaginations one forms where dear self is concerned! How sure to be mistaken!

Oh! do not attack me with your watch. A watch is always too fast or too slow. I cannot be dictated to by a watch.

I do suspect that he is not really necessary to my happiness.

Laugh as much as you choose, but you will not laugh me out of my opinion.