Jane Austen Quotes

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

You will have a great deal of unreserved discourse with Mrs. K., I dare say, upon this subject, as well as upon many other of our family matters. Abuse everybody but me.

For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbors and laugh at them in our turn?

What could I do! Facts are such horrid things!

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.

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

[M]ost of us, male and female, are as children compared with this one glorious human being.

The Webbs are really gone! When I saw the waggons at the door, and thought of all the trouble they must have in moving, I began to reproach myself for not having liked them better, but since the waggons have disappeared my conscience has been closed again, and I am excessively glad they are gone.

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 everything open?

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

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

How horrible it is to have so many people killed! And what a blessing that one cares for none of them!

I have now attained the true art of letter-writing, which we are always told, is to express on paper exactly what one would say to the same person by word of mouth.

The pride of any mother is to give birth to a responsible and successful child.

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

What should I do with your strong, manly, spirited sketches, full of variety and glow? How could I possibly join them on to the little bit (two inches wide) of ivory on which I work with so fine a brush, as produces little effect after much labour?