Top 100 Quotes About Austen
#1. She had spoken it; but she trembled when it was done, conscious that her words were listened to, and daring not even to try to observe their effect.
Jane Austen
#2. Miss Bingley's congratulations to her brother, on his approaching marriage, were all that was affectionate and insincere.
Jane Austen
#3. Men have had every advantage of us in telling their own story.
Jane Austen
#4. THIS little work was finished in the year 1803, and intended for immediate publication.
Jane Austen
#5. That is the case with us all, papa. One half of the world cannot understand the pleasures of the other. Later
Jane Austen
#6. Jane Austen? I feel that I am approaching dangerous ground. The reputation of Jane Austen is surrounded by cohorts of defenders who are ready to do murder for their sacred cause.
Arnold Bennett
#7. For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbors, and laugh at them in our turn?
Jane Austen
#8. These are difficulties which you must settle for yourself. Choose your own degree of crossness. I shall press you no more.
Jane Austen
#9. Miss Bennet he acknowledged to be pretty, but she smiled too much.
Jane Austen
#10. A family of ten children will be always called a fine family, where there are heads and arms and legs enough for the number.
Jane Austen
#11. He admires as a lover, not as a connoisseur. To satisfy me, those characters must be united.
Jane Austen
#12. All this she must possess, and to all this she must yet add something more substantial, in the improvement of her mind by extensive reading. Mr. Darcy
Jane Austen
#13. I think Jane Austen builds suspense well in a couple of places, but she squanders it, and she gets to the endgame too quickly. So I will be working on those things.
Val McDermid
#14. One has not great hopes from Birmingham. I always say there is something direful in the sound.
Jane Austen
#15. 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
#16. I am quite enough in love. I should be sorry to be any more
Jane Austen
#17. A mother would have been always present. A mother would have been a constant friend; her influence would have been beyond all other.
Jane Austen
#18. Hat sanguine expectation of happiness which is happiness itself
Jane Austen
#19. Where he could think with pleasure of his own importance, and,
Jane Austen
#20. And this," cried Darcy, as he walked with quick steps across the room, "is your opinion of me! This is the estimation in which you hold me! I thank you for explaining it so fully.
Jane Austen
#21. Jane Austen had created six heroines, each quite different, and that gave Charlotte courage. There wasn't just one kind of woman to be.
Shannon Hale
#22. With such a worshipping wife, it was hardly possible that any natural defects in it should not be increased. The extreme sweetness of her temper must hurt his.
Jane Austen
#23. Letters are no matter of indifference; they are generally a very positive curse.
Jane Austen
#24. But yet it appeared to her so natural, so inevitable to strive against an inclination of that sort unrequited, that she could not comprehend its continuing very long in equal force.
Jane Austen
#25. Respect for right conduct is felt by every body.
Jane Austen
#26. My feelings are not often shared, not often understood - Marianne Dashwood
Jane Austen
#27. A man would always wish to give a woman a better home than the one he takes her from; and he who can do it, where there is no doubt of her regard, must, I think, be the happiest of mortals.
Jane Austen
#29. Where there is a wish to please, one ought to overlook, and one does overlook a great deal.
Jane Austen
#30. ... she had nothing to do but to forgive herself and be happier than ever ...
Jane Austen
#31. Oh! No, I only mean what I have read about. It always puts me in mind of the country that Emily and her father travelled through, in The Mysteries of Udolpho. But you never read novels, I dare say?" "Why not?" "Because they are not clever enough for you - gentlemen read better books.
Jane Austen
#32. It was rather too late in the day to set about being simple-minded and ignorant.
Jane Austen
#33. 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
#34. The worst crimes; are the crimes of the heart
Jane Austen
#35. Mr. Knightley, in fact, was one of the few people who could see faults in Emma Woodhouse, and the only one who ever told her of them.
Jane Austen
#36. I am glad I have done being in love with him.
Jane Austen
#37. 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
#38. Mrs. Bennet was beyond the reach of reason, and she continued to rail bitterly against the cruelty of settling an estate away from a family of five daughters, in favour of a man whom nobody cared anything about.
Jane Austen
#39. Mr. Bingley, and he was looked at with
Jane Austen
#40. Yet there it was not love. It was a little fever of admiration; but it might, probably must, end in love with some
Jane Austen
#41. The pleasantness of an employment does not always evince its propriety.
Jane Austen
#42. Seriously, a thirty-something woman shouldn't be daydreaming about a fictional character in a two-hundred-year-old world to the point where it interfered with her very real and much more important life and relationships. Of course she shouldn't.
Shannon Hale
#43. I wish, as well as everybody else, to be perfectly happy; but, like everybody else, it must be in my own way.
Jane Austen
#44. I do not think it worth while to wait for enjoyment until there is some real opportunity for it.
Jane Austen
#45. To be sure you know no actual good of me, but nobody thinks of that when they fall in love.
Jane Austen
#46. Not even Fanny had tears for aunt Norris, not even when she was gone for ever.
Jane Austen
#47. To you I shall say, as I have often said before, 'Do not be in a hurry, the right man will come at last '. - Jane Austen
Alexandra Potter
#48. Here I have opportunity enough for the exercise of my talent, as the chief of my time is spent in conversation.
Jane Austen
#49. It is not everyone,' said Elinor, 'who has your passion for dead leaves.
Jane Austen
#50. I'm very fond of experimental housekeeping.
Jane Austen
#51. If there was a Jane Austen camp, I would go, no question.
Stephenie Meyer
#53. That the Miss Lucases and the Miss Bennets should meet to talk over a ball was absolutely necessary; and the morning after the assembly brought the former to Longbourn to hear and to communicate.
Jane Austen
#54. There will be little rubs and disappointments everywhere, and we are all apt to expect too much; but then, if one scheme of happiness fails, human nature turns to another; if the first calculation is wrong, we make a second better: we find comfort somewhere.
Jane Austen
#55. She cannot expect to excel if she does not practice a good deal.
Jane Austen
#56. How earnestly did she then wish that her former opinions had been more reasonable, more moderate!
Jane Austen
#57. I boast of being the only man in London who has been bombed off a lavatory seat while reading Jane Austen. She went into the bath; I went through the door.
Kingsley Martin
#58. Even Elizabeth began to fear - not that Bingley was indifferent - but that his sisters would be successful in keeping him away. Unwilling as she was to admit an idea so destructive
Jane Austen
#60. I can recollect nothing more to say at present; perhaps breakfast may assist my ideas. I was deceived
my breakfast supplied only two ideas
that the rolls were good and the butter bad.
Jane Austen
#61. Emma is spoiled by being the cleverest of her family. At ten years old, she had the misfortune of being able to answer questions which puzzled her sister at seventeen.
Jane Austen
#62. How much I love every thing that is decided and open!
Jane Austen
#63. The fact is, that you were sick of civility, of deference, of officious attention. You were disgusted with the women who were always speaking, and looking, and thinking for your approbation alone.
Jane Austen
#64. She [Mary I] married Philip King of Spain, who in her sister's reign, was famous for building Armadas.
Jane Austen
#65. The rector of a parish has much to do. - In the first place, he must make such an agreement for tythes as may be beneficial to himself and not offensive to his patron.
Jane Austen
#66. 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
#67. Yet some happiness must and would arise, from the very conviction, that he did suffer.
Jane Austen
#68. No one else could be benefited by such a belief as this; for were I persuaded that Charlotte had any regard for him, I should only think worse of her understanding than I now
Jane Austen
#69. What a shame, for I dearly love to laugh.
Jane Austen
#71. I actually didn't like Jane Austen. I was more into the Brontes. They were so wild and passionate. I thought there was something a bit tame about Austen.
Frances O'Connor
#72. I never could be so happy as you. Till I have your disposition, your goodness, I never can have your happiness.
Jane Austen
#73. I love books; my suitcases are always full of them. Books and shoes. I read when I am sad, when I am happy, when I am nervous. My favourite British author is Jane Austen, and my favourite American one is John O'Hara.
Carolina Herrera
#74. How good Mrs. West could have written such books and collected so many hard works, with all her family cares, is still more a matter of astonishment! Composition seems to me impossible with a head full of joints of mutton and doses of rhubarb.
Jane Austen
#75. 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
#76. You pierce my soul. I'm half agony, half hope.
Jane Austen
#77. I beg your pardon; one knows exactly what to think.
Jane Austen
#78. There is no other enjoyment like reading
Jane Austen
#79. For when people are determined on a mode of conduct which they know to be wrong, they feel injured by the expectation of any thing better from them.
Jane Austen
#80. It is not time or opportunity that is to determine intimacy; - it is disposition alone. Seven years would be insufficient to make some people acquainted with each other, and seven days are more than enough for others.
Jane Austen
#81. Elizabeth Bennet: I'm very fond of walking. Mr. Darcy: Yes... yes I know. (from Pride & Prejudice, the movie)
Jane Austen
#82. Whatever bears affinity to cunning is despicable.
Jane Austen
#83. Elinor ... whose advice was so effectual, possessed a strength of understanding and coolness of judgment ... her disposition was affectionate, and her feelings were strong; but she knew how to govern them.
Jane Austen
#84. Strategic partnership is the truest foundation for marriage and intimacy. Strategic thinking does not assume atomistic individuals; indeed, Austen argues that strategic thinking in concert forms the basis of the closest human relationships.
Michael Suk-Young Chwe
#85. His understanding and opinions all please me; he wants nothing but a little more liveliness, and that, if he marry prudently, his wife may teach him. I thought him very sly; - he hardly ever mentioned your name. But slyness seems the fashion.
Jane Austen
#87. But I will not repine. It cannot last long. He will be forgot, and we shall all be as we were before.
Jane Austen
#88. It was not in her nature, however, to increase her vexations by dwelling on them. She was confident of having performed her duty, and to fret over unavoidable evils, or augment them by anxiety, was not part of her disposition.
Jane Austen
#89. I cannot look at you with anything other than abhorrence, much less affection! I couldn't bare your presence when we were children and, I'm afraid to say, the repulsive way at which you have grown to be has made it even worse! You have taken everything from me...
Madeline Courtney
#90. I could easily forgive his pride, if he had not mortified mine.
Jane Austen
#91. She is never alone when she has Her Books. Books, to her, are Friends. Give her Shakespeare or Jane Austen, Meredith or Hardy, and she is Lost - lost in a world of her own. She sleeps so little that most of her nights are spent reading.
E.M. Delafield
#92. Everybody's heart is open, you know, when they have recently escaped from severe pain, or are recovering the blessing of health.
Jane Austen
#93. Seldom, very seldom, does complete truth belong to any human disclosure; seldom can it happen that something is not a little disguised or a little mistaken.
Jane Austen
#94. I wish I might take this for a compliment; but to be so easily seen through I am afraid is pitiful.
Jane Austen
#95. Mr. Wickham is blessed with such happy manners as may ensure his making friends - whether he may be equally capable of retaining them is less certain.
Jane Austen
#97. 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
#98. But if I were you, I would stand by the nephew. He has more to give.
Jane Austen
#99. Reflection must be reserved for solitary hours; whenever she was alone, she gave way to it as the greatest relief; and not a day went by without a solitary walk, in which she might indulge in all the delight of unpleasant recollections.
Jane Austen
#100. We may sometimes take greater liberties in November than in May.
Jane Austen
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