Austen's Quotes

#1. But some characters in books are really real
Jane Austen's are; and I know those five Bennets at the opening of Pride and Prejudice, simply waiting to raven the young men at Netherfield Park, are not giving one thought to the real facts of marriage.

Dodie Smith

#2. I was convinced I felt as strongly about Jane Austen's books as Ashleigh had ever felt about any of her crazes, but my love was deep and silent - and therefore easily overshadowed.

Polly Shulman

#3. I'm named after Jane Austen's Emma, and I've always been able to relate to her. She's strong, confident but quite tactless.

Emma Donoghue

#4. I thought he was the man I'd been waiting for. A hero right out of Austen. The one who would finally make everything okay. Only he wasn't real. Like Austen's characters, he was fiction. Mr. Darcy broke my heart.

Beth Pattillo

#5. When I take up one of Jane Austen's books ... I feel like a barkeep entering the kingdom of heaven. I know what his sensation would be and his private comments. He would not find the place to his taste, and he would probably say so.

Mark Twain

#6. Here I am once more in this scene of dissipation and vice, and I begin already to find my morals corrupted.
Jane Austen's Letters August 1796

Jane Austen

#7. Jane Austen's work was my first experience of grown-up literature, and has supplied a lifetime of pleasure: it's the only book that, as an adult, I re-read.

Jo Baker

#8. The celestial brightness of Pride and Prejudice is unequalled even in Jane Austen's other work; after a life of much disappointment and grief, in which some people would have seen nothing but tedium and emptiness, she stepped forth as an author, breathing gaiety and youth, robed in dazzling light.

Elizabeth Jenkins

#9. She doesn't do the things heroines are supposed to. Which is rather Jane Austen's point - Fanny is her subversive heroine. She is gentle and self-doubting and utterly feminine; and given the right circumstances, she would defy an army.

Susanna Clarke

#10. Just the omission of Jane Austen's books alone would make a fairly good library out of a library that hadn't a book in it.

Mark Twain

#11. Matthais: *Sighs* England. I'd take my Valentine to England on a tour of all the places from Jane Austen's books. Derbyshire, Mr. Darcy's house. Places like that.
Ayden: You're really milking that whole dark, brooding thing.

A&E Kirk

#12. We've been texting for weeks. Surely it's rather like in Jane Austen's day when they did letter-writing for months and months and then just, like, immediately got married?'
'Bridget. Sleeping with a twenty-nine-year-old off Twitter on the second date is not "rather like Jane Austen's day".

Helen Fielding

#13. Miss Austen's novels ... seem to me vulgar in tone, sterile in artistic invention, imprisoned in the wretched conventions of English society, without genius, wit, or knowledge of the world. Never was life so pinched and narrow. The one problem in the mind of the writer ... is marriageableness.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

#14. The visible structure of Jane Austen's stories may be flimsy enough; but their foundations drive deep down into the basic principles of human conduct. On her bit of ivory she has engraved a criticism of life as serious and as considers as Hardy's.

David Cecil

#15. Jane Austen's characters for women are always very strong, opinionated and elegantly written, so they're always great for an actress to have a chance to do.

Tamsin Egerton

#16. Bridget. Sleeping with a twenty-nine year old off Twitter on the second date is not 'rather like in Jane Austen's day'. (Talitha)

Helen Fielding

#17. Words change over time. 'Condescending,' for instance, was once a good thing to be. It meant that a person was willing to interact politely with people of lower social ranks. In Jane Austen's world, a lady praised for her condescension was receiving a sincere compliment.

Nancy Kress

#18. Do not despair, little Alice. Only persist, and thou shalt see, Jane Austen's all in all to thee.

Fay Weldon

#19. It was strange to think that all the great women of fiction were, until Jane Austen's day, not only seen by the other sex, but seen only in relation to the other sex. And how small a part of woman's life is that ...

Virginia Woolf

#20. I always say that the characters in Jane Austen's original books are rather like zombies because they live in this bubble of immense wealth and privilege and no matter what's going on around them they have a singular purpose to maintain their rank and to impress others.

Seth Grahame-Smith

#21. ...all the great issues in human life make their appearance on Jane Austen's narrow stage. True, it's only the stage of petty domestic circumstance, but that, after all, is the only stage where most of us are likely to meet them.

Ian Watt

#22. 'Pride and Prejudice' is often compared to 'Cinderella,' but Jane Austen's real 'Cinderella' tale is 'Mansfield Park.'

Susanna Clarke

#23. Miss Bingley's congratulations to her brother, on his approaching marriage, were all that was affectionate and insincere.

Jane Austen

#24. If there is a heaven, Jane Austen is sitting in a small room with Mother Teresa and Princess Diana, listening to Duran Duran, forever. If there's a hell, she's standing.

Roddy Doyle

#25. Had Elizabeth's opinion been all drawn from her own family, she could not have formed a very pleasing picture of conjugal felicity or domestic comfort.

Jane Austen

#26. She [Mary I] married Philip King of Spain, who in her sister's reign, was famous for building Armadas.

Jane Austen

#27. There was a strange rumor in Highbury of all the little Perrys being seen with a slice of Mrs. Weston's wedding-cake in their hands: but Mr. Woodhouse would never believe it.

Jane Austen

#28. Walter Scott has no business to write novels, especially good ones. - It is not fair. - He has fame and profit enough as a poet, and should not be taking the bread out of other people's mouths. - I do not like him, and do not mean to like Waverley if I can help it - but fear I must.

Jane Austen

#29. Everybody's heart is open, you know, when they have recently escaped from severe pain, or are recovering the blessing of health.

Jane Austen

#30. No highbrow literary type would ever say 'Moby Dick' is good but it's just about a whale, or a Jane Austen would be important if she wasn't just writing about romantic relationships.

Sophie Hannah

#31. But while the imaginations of other people will carry them away to form wrong judgements of our conduct, and to decide on it by slight appearances, one's happiness must in some measure be always at the mercy of chance.

Jane Austen

#32. All my life I thought that the story was over when the hero and heroine were safely engaged
after all, what's good enough for Jane Austen ought to be good enough for anyone. But it's a lie. The story is about to begin, and every day will be a new piece of the plot.

Mary Ann Shaffer

#33. No young lady can be justified in falling in love before the gentleman's love is declared, it must be very improper that a young lady should dream of a gentleman before the gentleman is first known to have dreamt of her.

Jane Austen

#34. No man is offended by another man's admiration of the woman he loves; it is the woman only who can make it a torment.

Jane Austen

#35. I admire all my three sons-in-law highly. Wickham, perhaps is my favourite; but I think I shall like your husband quite as well as Jane's.

Jane Austen

#36. As a brother, a landlord, a master, she considered how many people's happiness were in his guardianship!
How much of pleasure or pain it was in his power to bestow!
How much of good or evil must be done by him!

Jane Austen

#37. If you look at my personal library, you will notice that it ranges from Henry James to Steig Larsson, from Margaret Atwood to Max Hastings. There's Jane Austen and Tom Perrotta and volumes of letters from Civil War privates. It's pretty eclectic.

Chris Bohjalian

#38. Though Darcy could never receive him at Pemberley, yet, for Elizabeth's sake, he assisted him further in his profession.

Jane Austen

#39. Fishtale River Guides are personable and very knowledgeable. I like a guide who'll talk to me and explain what's going on. They work hard to help me catch my fish. I fish with them at least twice a year.

Chuck Austen

#40. Vanity was the beginning and the end of Sir Walter Eliot's character; vanity of person and of situation.

Jane Austen

#41. even in the quieter professions, there is a toil and a labour of the mind, if not of the body, which seldom leaves a man's looks to the natural effect of time.

Jane Austen

#42. It's a different thing to write a love story now than in the time of Jane Austen, Eliot, or Tolstoy. One of the problems is that once divorce is possible, once break-ups are possible, it can all become a little less momentous.

Mona Simpson

#43. Heavens! let me not suppose that she dares go about Emma Woodhouse-ing me! But, upon my honour, there seems no limits to the licentiousness of that woman's tongue!

Jane Austen

#44. I don't need to see the trail to know you're at the end of it. My grandfather's compass may not work, but mine is still true.

Diana Peterfreund

#45. And they soon drew from those inquiries the full conviction that one of them at least knew what it was to love. Of the lady's sensations they remained a little in doubt; but that the gentleman was overflowing with admiration was evident enough.

Jane Austen

#46. I think the success of 'Downton' is partly because there are effectively 18 leading characters, all given equal importance, so it's enormously involving on many levels. But also, it's a new story. It's not like Dickens or Austen, where everyone knows the denouement.

Michelle Dockery

#47. But a week must pass; only a week, in Anne's reckoning, and then, she supposed, they must meet; and soon she began to wish that she could feel secure even for a week.

Jane Austen

#48. Still, however, she had the sensation of there being something more than immediately appeared, in Mr Elliot's wishing, after an interval of so many years, to be well received by them. In a worldly view, he had nothing to gain by being on terms with Sir Walter; nothing to risk by a state of variance.

Jane Austen

#49. I think it's about as likely Jane Austen was gay as that she was found out to be a man.

Claire Tomalin

#50. I could not excuse a man's having more music than love - more ear than eye - a more acute sensibility to fine sounds than to my feelings.

Jane Austen

#51. In vain I have struggled. It will not do. My feelings will not be repressed. You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you." Elizabeth's astonishment was beyond expression.

Jane Austen

#52. A new sort of way this, for a young fellow to be making love, by breaking his mistress's head,

Jane Austen

#53. And no other attempt made at secrecy than Mrs. Norris's talking of it everywhere as a matter not to be talked of at present.

Jane Austen

#54. A sick child is always the mother's property; her own feelings generally make it so.

Jane Austen

#55. ...it is very well worth while to be tormented for two or three years of one's life, for the sake of being able to read all the rest of it. Consider - if reading had not been taught, Mrs. Radcliffe would have written in vain - or perhaps might not have written at all.

Jane Austen

#56. He is a gentleman, and I am a gentleman's daughter. So far we are equal.

Jane Austen

#57. It all easy. I have been always telling you, my love, that I had no idea of the change being so very material to Hartfield as you apprehended; and now you have Emma's account. I hope you will be satisfied.

Jane Austen

#58. Common sense, common care, common prudence, were all sunk in Mrs. Dashwood's romantic delicacy.

Jane Austen

#59. I should think he must be rather a dressy man for his time of life. Such a number of looking-glasses! Oh Lord! There is not getting away from one's self

Jane Austen

#60. Affectation of candour is common enough - one meets with it everywhere. But to be candid without ostentation or design - to take the good of everybody's character and make it still better, and say nothing of the bad - belongs to you alone.

Jane Austen

#61. And I decide to stop inwardly composing the feminist world court's prosecutorial summation to the jury.

Laurie Viera Rigler

#62. Margaret, the other sister, was a good-humored, well-disposed girl; but as she had already imbibed a good deal of Marianne's romance, without having much of her sense, she did not, at thirteen, bid fair to equal her sisters at a more advanced period of life.

Jane Austen

#63. It's not Jane Austen, it's not Henry James. But this writer, or writers, well, they're pretty damn good too.

Richard Curtis

#64. The long blue shadows of afternoon advanced before me like cheerful ghosts of last summer's growth, dancing past the withered flower borders and the stiff hedges to fall at the feet of a stone nymph, her cascade of water frozen in her urn.

Stephanie Barron

#65. Walking across the moors made me feel as if I'd stepped primly out of a Jane Austen book or an Impressionist painting. But I bet even Elizabeth Bennet had never punted a rabbit before, and my current count was 137.

Delilah S. Dawson

#66. To me [Edgar Allen Poe's] prose is unreadable - like Jane Austin's [sic]. No there is a difference. I could read his prose on salary, but not Jane's. Jane is entirely impossible. It seems a great pity that they allowed her to die a natural death.

Mark Twain

#67. Admiral Croft's manners were not quite of the tone to suit Lady Russell, but they delighted Anne. His goodness of heart and simplicity of character were irresistible.

Jane Austen

#68. I've never liked the telephone. It's a noisy, shrill intruder. If it were up to me, I'd ban all phones and bring back visiting days, like in Jane Austen and Edith Wharton novels:

Terri Cheney

#69. Remind me why I'm doing this again?" I whispered back.
"For your real friends, of course: Me, Caleb, and Chad."
"That's sweet of you to say, but I'm not sure we're all friends. Mr. Darcy over here," I indicated Caleb with a nod, "finds me barely tolerable.

Amy Helmes

#70. Such a number of looking-glasses! oh Lord! there was no getting away from one's self.

Jane Austen

#71. He gave her to understand that he had looked at her with some earnestness. She knew it well; and she remembered another person's look also.

Jane Austen

#72. Two elder sisters. In society so superior to what she had generally known, her improvement was great. She was not of so ungovernable a temper as Lydia; and, removed from the influence of Lydia's example, she became, by proper attention and management, less irritable, less ignorant,

Jane Austen

#73. It is very unfair to judge of any body's conduct, without an intimate knowledge of their situation.

Jane Austen

#74. The gentleness, modesty, and sweetness of her character were warmly expatiated on; that sweetness which makes so essential a part of every woman's worth in the judgment of man, that though he sometimes loves where it is not, he can never believe it absent.

Jane Austen

#75. When any two young people take it into their heads to marry, they are pretty sure by perseverance to carry their point, be they ever so poor, or ever so imprudent, or ever so little likely to be necessary to each other's ultimate comfort.

Jane Austen

#76. I will not raise objections against any one's conduct on so illiberal a foundation, as a difference in judgment from myself, or a deviation from what I may think right and consistent.

Jane Austen

#77. Kissing Hugh was lovely. Glad I invented it. Can't rely on Austen for a snog, that's for sure.

Emma Thompson

#78. Well,if there's nothing else you ladies need in the library, Sophie, would you care to accompany me on a walk about the grounds?
I wondered if there were ever times when Dad didn't sound like he'd just escaped from a Jane Austen novel.

Rachel Hawkins

#79. My name's Bree Chase, but wherever I go, I'm known as the ballbuster." When

Kat Austen

#80. It's such a happiness when good people get together.

Jane Austen

#81. Every romantic woman dreams of Willoughby. However, every wise woman's heart knows Colonel Brandon would take care of her when she was sick, love her when she was well and know her worth every day that she breathes.

Shannon L. Alder

#82. Before 'Austenland,' I got do a lead role in 'Northanger Abbey', which is Jane Austen. Growing up in England, you can't really ignore Jane Austen. It's always been there.

JJ Feild

#83. What! do not you know who Miss Williams is? I am sure you must have heard of her before. She is a relation of the Colonel's, my dear; a very near relation. We will not say how near, for fear of shocking the young ladies.

Jane Austen

#84. Elinor placed all that was astonishing in this way of acting to his mother's account; and it was happy for her that he had a mother whose character was so imperfectly known to her, as to be the general excuse for every thing strange on the part of her son.

Jane Austen

#85. A young woman, if she fall into bad gands, may be teazed, and kept at a distance from those she wants to be with; but one cannot comprehend a young man's being under such restraint, as not to be able to spend a week with his father, if he likes it.

Jane Austen

#86. There's a history of English literature where the best boils to the top, and Jane Austen stands right at the top of that.

JJ Feild

#87. The dog show emphasizes bloodline, appearance, and comportment, but money and breeding are never far from anyone's mind.

Karen Joy Fowler

#88. Living with hope is like rubbing up against a cheese grater. It keeps taking slices off you until there's so little left you just crumble.

Catherine Austen

#89. You will think me rhapsodizing; but when I am out of doors, especially when I am sitting out of doors, I am very apt to get into this sort of wondering strain. One cannot fix one's eyes on the commonest natural production without finding food for a rambling fancy.

Jane Austen

#90. Mr. Bennet's expectations were fully answered. His cousin was as absurd as he had hoped, and he listened to him with the keenest enjoyment.

Jane Austen

#91. Fanny's friendship was all that he had to cling to.

Jane Austen

#92. Let us have no ranting tragedies. Too many charactersNot a tolerable woman's part in the play.

Jane Austen

#93. I waited patiently - years - for the pendulum to swing the other way, for men to start reading Jane Austen, learn how to knit, pretend to love cosmos, organize scrapbook parties, and make out with each other while we leer. And then we'd say, Yeah, he's a Cool Guy.

Gillian Flynn

#94. Sex sells, even to smart, liberated women, and Mr. Darcy was the smart girl's pinup boy.

Karen Doornebos

#95. I see your face in my mind's eye under every varying circumstance of the day.

Jane Austen

#96. I do not dislike him. I consider him, on the contrary, as a very respectable man, who has everybody's good word and nobody's notice ...

Jane Austen

#97. I always read Jane Austen during wars. Her complete lack of interest in Napoleon's activities has a soothingly insulating effect.

Louise Andrews Kent

#98. One man's style must not be the rule of another's.

Jane Austen

#99. Pray, how violent was Mr. Bingley's love?" "I never saw a more promising inclination; he was growing quite inattentive to other people, and wholly engrossed by her. Every time they met, it was more decided and remarkable. At

Jane Austen

#100. Instead of receiving any such letter of excuse from his friend, as Elizabeth half expected Mr. Bingley to do, he was able to bring Darcy with him to Longbourn before many days had passed after Lady Catherine's visit.

Jane Austen