Jane Austen
The power of doing anything with quickness is always prized much by the possessor, and often without any attention to the imperfection of the performance.Collection: Power
My idea of good company is the company of clever, well-informed people who have a great deal of conversation; that is what I call good company.Collection: Great
Nobody, who has not been in the interior of a family, can say what the difficulties of any individual of that family may be.Collection: Family
Selfishness must always be forgiven you know, because there is no hope of a cure.Collection: Forgiveness
Happiness in marriage is entirely a matter of chance.Collection: Happiness
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.Collection: Marriage
Men have had every advantage of us in telling their own story. Education has been theirs in so much higher a degree; the pen has been in their hands. I will not allow books to prove anything.Collection: Education
Business, you know, may bring you money, but friendship hardly ever does.Collection: Friendship
One man's ways may be as good as another's, but we all like our own best.Collection: Best
Single women have a dreadful propensity for being poor. Which is one very strong argument in favor of matrimony.Collection: Women
There is nothing like staying at home for real comfort.Collection: Home
Respect for right conduct is felt by every body.Collection: Respect
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.Collection: Truth
There is no charm equal to tenderness of heart.Collection: Romantic
Nobody minds having what is too good for them.Collection: Good
A large income is the best recipe for happiness I ever heard of.Collection: Happiness
Friendship is certainly the finest balm for the pangs of disappointed love.Collection: Moving
A lady's imagination is very rapid; it jumps from admiration to love, from love to matrimony in a moment.Collection: Imagination
It is always incomprehensible to a man that a woman should ever refuse an offer of marriage.Collection: Marriage
From politics, it was an easy step to silence.Collection: Politics
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.Collection: Beauty
General benevolence, but not general friendship, made a man what he ought to be.Collection: Friendship
Woman is fine for her own satisfaction alone. No man will admire her the more, no woman will like her the better for it. Neatness and fashion are enough for the former, and a something of shabbiness or impropriety will be most endearing to the latter.Collection: Alone
Give a girl an education and introduce her properly into the world, and ten to one but she has the means of settling well, without further expense to anybody.Collection: Education
To sit in the shade on a fine day and look upon verdure is the most perfect refreshment.Collection: Nature
Think only of the past as its remembrance gives you pleasure.
Vanity working on a weak head, produces every sort of mischief.
Life seems but a quick succession of busy nothings.
There are people, who the more you do for them, the less they will do for themselves.
Nothing is more deceitful than the appearance of humility. It is often only carelessness of opinion, and sometimes an indirect boast.
A mind lively and at ease, can do with seeing nothing, and can see nothing that does not answer.
A single woman with a very narrow income must be a ridiculous, disagreeable old maid - the proper sport of boys and girls; but a single woman of good fortune is always respectable, and may be as sensible and pleasant as anybody else.
An artist cannot do anything slovenly.
We have all a better guide in ourselves, if we would attend to it, than any other person can be.
Every man is surrounded by a neighborhood of voluntary spies.
Is not general incivility the very essence of love?
I have been a selfish being all my life, in practice, though not in principle.
Let other pens dwell on guilt and misery.
It is happy for you that you possess the talent of flattering with delicacy. May I ask whether these pleasing attentions proceed from the impulse of the moment, or are they the result of previous study?
The more I know of the world, the more I am convinced that I shall never see a man whom I can really love.
For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbors and laugh at them in our turn?
The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid.
I do not want people to be very agreeable, as it saves me the trouble of liking them a great deal.
One man's style must not be the rule of another's.
To be fond of dancing was a certain step towards falling in love.
What is right to be done cannot be done too soon.
To flatter and follow others, without being flattered and followed in turn, is but a state of half enjoyment.
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.
Next to being married, a girl likes to be crossed in love a little now and then.
If things are going untowardly one month, they are sure to mend the next.