Jane Austen
How quick come the reasons for approving what we like!
Vanity and pride are different things, though the words are often used synonymously. A person may be proud without being vain. Pride relates more to our opinion of ourselves; vanity, to what we would have others think of us.
Nothing ever fatigues me but doing what I do not like.
Those who do not complain are never pitied.
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.
I would have everybody marry if they can do it properly: I do not like to have people throw themselves away; but everybody should marry as soon as they can do it to advantage.
I cannot speak well enough to be unintelligible.
Where an opinion is general, it is usually correct.
There is safety in reserve, but no attraction. One cannot love a reserved person.
One does not love a place the less for having suffered in it, unless it has been all suffering, nothing but suffering.
If I loved you less, I might be able to talk about it more.
Good-humoured, unaffected girls, will not do for a man who has been used to sensible women. They are two distinct orders of being.
One half of the world cannot understand the pleasures of the other.
We do not look in our great cities for our best morality.
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 the mouths of other people.
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.
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.
They are much to be pitied who have not been given a taste for nature early in life.
It will, I believe, be everywhere found, that as the clergy are, or are not what they ought to be, so are the rest of the nation.
I am afraid that the pleasantness of an employment does not always evince its propriety.
Dress is at all times a frivolous distinction, and excessive solicitude about it often destroys its own aim.
Every savage can dance.
It sometimes happens that a woman is handsomer at twenty-nine than she was ten years before.
In nine cases out of ten, a woman had better show more affection than she feels.
My sore throats are always worse than anyone's.
I could not sit down to write a serious romance under any other motive than to save my life.
Surprises are foolish things. The pleasure is not enhanced, and the inconvenience is often considerable.
Husbands and wives generally understand when opposition will be vain.
A person who can write a long letter with ease, cannot write ill.
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.
What wild imaginations one forms where dear self is concerned! How sure to be mistaken!
One cannot be always laughing at a man without now and then stumbling on something witty.
There is something so amiable in the prejudices of a young mind, that one is sorry to see them give way to the reception of more general opinions.
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.
There is not one in a hundred of either sex who is not taken in when they marry.
It is very difficult for the prosperous to be humble.
There are certainly not so many men of large fortune in the world, as there are pretty women to deserve them.
It isn't what we say or think that defines us, but what we do.Collection: Thinking
Look into your own heart because who looks outside, dreams, but who looks inside awakes.Collection: Dream
It is very unfair to judge any body's conduct, without an intimate knowledge of their situation.Collection: Judging
Our scars make us know that our past was for realCollection: Real
Perhaps it is our imperfections that make us so perfect for one another.Collection: Love
And sometimes I have kept my feelings to myself, because I could find no language to describe them in.Collection: Healing
Almost anything is possible with timeCollection: Inspiration
Self-knowledge is the first step to maturity.Collection: Maturity
It's such a happiness when good people get together.Collection: People
I was quiet but I was not blind.Collection: Quiet
None of us want to be in calm waters all our lives.Collection: Women
There is nothing I would not do for those who are really my friends. I have no notion of loving people by halves, it is not my nature.Collection: Love