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Authors & Writing
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I will not adopt that ungenerous and impolitic custom so common with novel writers, of degrading by their contemptuous censure the very performances, to the number of which they are themselves adding—joining with their greatest enemies in bestowing the harshest epithets on such works, and scarcely ever permitting them to be read by their own heroine, who, if she accidentally take up a novel, is sure to turn over its insipid leaves with disgust.
-Jane Austen, The narrator, in Northanger Abbey, ch. 5, 1818
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Although our productions have afforded more extensive and unaffected pleasure than those of any other literary corporation in the world, no species of composition has been so much decried. And what are you reading, Miss -- -? Oh! it is only a novel! replies the young lady; while she lays down her book with affected indifference, or momentary shame. It is only Cecilia, or Camilla, or Belinda ; or, 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 humor, are conveyed to the world in the best chosen language.
-Jane Austen
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City Life, Cities
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We do not look in our great cities for our best morality.
-Jane Austen
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One has not great hopes from Birmingham. I always say there is something direful in the sound.
-Jane Austen
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Dance, Dancing
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It may be possible to do without dancing entirely. Instances have been known of young people passing many, many months successively without being at any ball of any description, and no material injury accrue either to body or mind; but when a beginning is made -- when the felicities of rapid motion have once been, though slightly, felt -- it must be a very heavy set that does not ask for more.
-Jane Austen
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Fear
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You mistake me, my dear. I have a high respect for your nerves. They are my old friends. I have heard you mention them with consideration these twenty years at least.
-Jane Austen
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Flattery
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. . . 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 the result of previous study?
-Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
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Fortune
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A woman, especially, if she have the misfortune of knowing anything, should conceal it as well as she can.
-Jane Austen
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Humility
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Nothing is more deceitful than the appearance of humility. It is often only carelessness of opinion, and sometimes an indirect boast.
-Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice, ch. 10 (the character Darcy), 1813
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Judging, Judgment
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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
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Literary
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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.
-Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
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Love
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In nine cases out of ten, a woman had better show more affection than she feels.
-Jane Austen
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Loyalty
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And I, Mr. Knightley, am equally stout in my confidence of its not doing them any harm. With all dear Emma's little faults, she is an excellent creature. Where shall we see a better daughter, or a kinder sister, or a truer friend? No, no; she has qualities which may be trusted; she will never lead any one really wrong; she will make no lasting blunder; where Emma errs once, she is in the right a hundred times.
-Jane Austen, Emma, ch. 5
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Marriage
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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.
-Jane Austen
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It is always incomprehensible to a man that a woman should ever refuse an offer of marriage.
-Jane Austen
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Happiness in marriage is entirely a matter of chance.
-Jane Austen
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Men & Women
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With men he can be rational and unaffected, but when he has ladies to please, every feature works.
-Jane Austen
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There are certainly are not so many men of large fortune in the world as there are of pretty woman to deserve them.
-Jane Austen
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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 may be on his first entering a neighbourhood, this truth is so well fixed in the minds of the surrounding families, that he is considered as the rightful property of some one or other of their daughters.
-Jane Austen, opening lines to Pride and Prejudice
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Money
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A large income is the best recipe for happiness I ever heard of.
-Jane Austen
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Business, you know, may bring you money, but friendship hardly ever does.
-Jane Austen
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Nature
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To sit in the shade on a fine day, and look upon verdure is the most perfect refreshment.
-Jane Austen
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Neighbors
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Every man is surrounded by a neighborhood of voluntary spies.
-Jane Austen
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For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbors, and laugh at them in our turn?
-Jane Austen
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Opinion
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Where an opinion is general, it is usually correct.
-Jane Austen
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Books by and about Jane Austen