Jane Austen - from a letter to her niece, November 18, 1814

Wisdom is better than wit, and in the long run will certainly have the laugh on her side.
Jane Austen
What dreadful weather we have! It keeps me in a continual state of inelegance.
Jane Austen
Where so many hours have been spent in convincing myself that I am right, is there not some reason to fear I may be wrong?
Jane Austen - Emma
Silly things do cease to be silly if they are done by sensible people in an impudent way.
Jane Austen
Why not seize the pleasure at once, how often is happiness destroyed by preparation, foolish preparations.
Jane Austen - Pride and Prejudice
For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbours, and laugh at them in our turn?
Jane Austen - Mansfield Park
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 - Pride and Prejudice
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.
Jane Austen - Mansfield Park
Life is just a quick succession of busy nothings.
Jane Austen - Mansfield Park
I pay very little regard...to what any young person says on the subject of marriage. If they profess a disinclination for it, I only set it down that they have not yet seen the right person.
Jane Austen
I do not want people to be agreeable, as it saves me the trouble of liking them.
Jane Austen - Northanger Abbey
"Only a novel"... in short, only some work in which the greatest powers of the mind are displayed, in which the most thorough knowledge of human nature, the happiest delineation of its varieties, the liveliest effusions of wit and humour are conveyed to the world in the best chosen language.
Jane Austen
To sit in the shade on a fine day, and look upon verdure is the most perfect refreshment.
Jane Austen
I do not want people to be agreeable, as it saves me the trouble of liking them.
Jane Austen - Mansfield Park
Everybody likes to go their own way--to choose their own time and manner of devotion.
Jane Austen - Northanger Abbey
But when a young lady is to be a heroine, the perverseness of forty surrounding families cannot prevent her. Something must and will happen to throw a hero in her way.
Jane Austen - Mansfield Park
In all the important preparations of the mind she was complete: being prepared for matrimony by an hatred of home, restraint, and tranquillity; by the misery of disappointed affection, and contempt of the man she was to marry.
Jane Austen - Emma
I always deserve the best treatment because I never put up with any other.
Jane Austen - Pride and Prejudice
Think only of the past as its remembrance gives you pleasure.
Jane Austen
One cannot be always laughing at a man without now and then stumbling on something witty.
Jane Austen - Mansfield Park
Nothing ever fatigues me, but doing what I do not like.
Jane Austen - Mansfield Park
A large income is the best recipe for happiness I ever heard of.
Jane Austen - Mansfield Park
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.
Jane Austen - Mansfield Park
Nothing amuses me more than the easy manner with which everybody settles the abundance of those who have a great deal less than themselves.
Jane Austen - Northanger Abbey
Friendship is certainly the finest balm for the pangs of disappointed love.
Jane Austen
We met Dr. Hall in such deep mourning that either his mother, his wife, or himself must be dead.
Jane Austen
For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbors and laugh at them in our turn?
Jane Austen - Pride and Prejudice
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a large fortune must be in want of a wife.
Jane Austen - Emma
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 - Emma
Oh! dear; I was so miserable! I am sure I must have been as white as my gown.
Jane Austen - Mansfield Park
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.
Jane Austen
I do not want people to be agreeable, as it saves me that trouble of liking them.
Jane Austen - Northanger Abbey
The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid.
Jane Austen
Where so many hours have been spent in convincing myself that I am right, is there not some reason to fear I may be wrong?
Jane Austen
What dreadful hot weather we have! It keeps me in a continual state of inelegance.
Jane Austen - Pride and Prejudice (opening lines)
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife. However little known the feelings or views of such a man on his first entering a neighbourhood, this truth is so well fixed in the minds of ths surrounding families, that he is considered as the rightful property of some one or other of their daughters.
Jane Austen - Mansfield Park
If any one faculty of our nature may be called more wonderful than the rest, I do think it is memory. There seems something more speakingly incomprehensible in the powers, the failures, the inequalities of memory, than in any other of our intelligences. The memory is sometimes so retentive, so serviceable, so obedient; at others, so bewildered and so weak; and at others again, so tyrannic, so beyond control! We are, to be sure, a miracle every way; but our powers of recollecting and of forgetting do seem peculiarly past finding out.
Jane Austen - Mansfield Park
Where any one body of educated men, of whatever denomination, are condemned indiscriminately, there must be a deficiency of information, or...of something else.
Jane Austen - The Watsons
A woman should never be trusted with money.
Jane Austen
One half of the world can not understand the pleasures of the other.
Jane Austen - Northanger Abbey, 1818
In every power, of which taste is the foundation, excellence is pretty fairly divided between the sexes.
Jane Austen - Emma
How much I love every thing that is decided and open!
Jane Austen - Emma
One half of the world cannot understand the pleasures of the other.
Jane Austen - Mansfield Park
We have all a better guide in ourselves, if we would attend to it, than any other person can be.
Jane Austen - Pride and Prejudice
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.
Jane Austen - Letter to Cassandra, 25 November 1798
An artist cannot do anything slovenly.
Jane Austen - Mansfield Park
A large income is the best recipe for happiness I ever heard of.
Jane Austen - Pride and Prejudice
You must learn some of my philosophy. Think only of the past as its remembrance gives you pleasure.
Jane Austen - Pride and Prejudice
You have delighted us long enough.
Jane Austen
It is always incomprehensible to a man that a woman should ever refuse an offer of marriage.
Jane Austen - Sense and Sensibility
At my time of life opinions are tolerably fixed. It is not likely that I should now see or hear anything to change them.
Jane Austen - Pride and Prejudice
We all know him to be a proud, unpleasant sort of a man; but this would be nothing if you really liked him.
Jane Austen - Emma
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.

- Jane Austen - from a letter to her niece, November 18, 1814