Top 500 Jane Austen Quotes (2026 Update)
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151. “Where shall we see a better daughter, or a kinder sister, or a truer friend?”

— Jane Austen

152. “One half of the world cannot understand the pleasures of the other.”

— Jane Austen

153. “It’s been many years since I had such an exemplary vegetable.”

— Jane Austen

154. “There are secrets in all families.”

— Jane Austen

155. “Give a girl an education and introduce her properly into the world.”

— Jane Austen

156. “A person who is knowingly bent on bad behavior, gets upset when better behavior is expected of them.”

— Jane Austen

157. “I take no leave of you, Miss Bennet: I send no compliments to your mother. You deserve no such attention. I am most seriously displeased.”

— Jane Austen

158. “An unhappy alternative is before you, Elizabeth. From this day you must be a stranger to one of your parents. Your mother will never see you again if you do not marry Mr. Collins, and I will never see you again if you do.”

— Jane Austen

159. “It is the misfortune of poetry, to be seldom safely enjoyed by those who enjoy it completely.”

— Jane Austen

160. “If things are going untowardly one month, they are sure to mend the next.”

— Jane Austen

161. “Facts or opinions which are to pass through the hands of so many, to be misconceived by folly in one, and ignorance in another, can hardly have much truth left.”

— Jane Austen

162. “His cold politeness, his ceremonious grace, were worse than anything.”

— Jane Austen

163. “Her heart did whisper that he had done it for her.”

— Jane Austen

164. “A man who has nothing to do with his own time has no conscience in his intrusion on that of others.”

— Jane Austen

165. “Fraternal love, sometimes almost every thing, is at others worse than nothing.”

— Jane Austen

166. “Is not poetry the food of love?”

— Jane Austen

167. “You have bewitched me, body and soul, and I love, I love, I love you. I never wish to be parted from you from this day on.”

— Jane Austen

168. “An interval of meditation, serious and grateful, was the best corrective of everything dangerous.”

— Jane Austen

169. “A sick child is always the mother’s property; her own feelings generally make it so.”

— Jane Austen

170. “Single women have a dreadful propensity for being poor. Which is one very strong argument in favor of matrimony.”

— Jane Austen

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171. “What strange creatures brothers are!”

— Jane Austen

172. “My characters shall have, after a little trouble, all that they desire.”

— Jane Austen

173. “An annuity is a very serious business.”

— Jane Austen

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

— Jane Austen

175. “Wisdom is better than wit, and in the long run will certainly have the laugh on her side.”

— Jane Austen

176. “Reflection must be reserved for solitary hours; whenever she was alone, she gave way to it as the greatest relief; and not a day went by without a solitary walk, in which she might indulge in all the delight of unpleasant recollections.”

— Jane Austen

177. “You shall not, for the sake of one individual, change the meaning of principle and integrity.”

— Jane Austen

178. “None of us want to be in calm waters all our lives.”

— Jane Austen

179. “This sweetest and best of all creatures, faultless in spite of all her faults.”

— Jane Austen

180. “Money can only give happiness where there is nothing else to give it.”

— Jane Austen

181. “The post-office is a wonderful establishment! The regularity and dispatch of it! If one thinks of all that it has to do, and all that it does so well, it is really astonishing!”

— Jane Austen

182. “One cannot have too large a party. A large party secures its own amusement.”

— Jane Austen

183. “My Emma, does not every thing serve to prove more and more the beauty of truth and sincerity in all our dealings with each other?”

— Jane Austen

184. “Emma Woodhouse, handsome, clever, and rich, with a comfortable home and happy disposition, seemed to unite some of the best blessings of existence; and had lived nearly twenty-one years in the world with very little to distress or vex her.”

— Jane Austen

185. “Laugh as much as you choose, but you will not laugh me out of my opinion.”

— Jane Austen

186. “I am the happiest creature in the world. Perhaps other people have said so before, but not one with such justice. I am happier even than Jane; she only smiles, I laugh.”

— Jane Austen

187. “I have always maintained the importance of Aunts.”

— Jane Austen

188. “Do not give way to useless alarm; though it is right to be prepared for the worst, there is no occasion to look on it as certain.”

— Jane Austen

189. “Nothing is more deceitful than the appearance of humility. It is often only carelessness of opinion, and sometimes an indirect boast.”

— Jane Austen

190. “I love you. Most ardently.”

— Jane Austen

191. “Better be without sense than misapply it as you do.”

— Jane Austen

192. “He may live in my memory as the most amiable man of my acquaintance...”

— Jane Austen

193. “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

194. “How quick come the reasons for approving what we like!”

— Jane Austen

195. “Now I must give one smirk and then we may be rational again.”

— Jane Austen

196. “It has been coming on so gradually, that I hardly know when it began. But I believe I must date it from my first seeing his beautiful grounds at Pemberley.”

— Jane Austen

197. “They are much to be pitied who have not been given a taste for nature early in life.”

— Jane Austen

198. “Completely and perfectly and incandescently happy...”

— Jane Austen

199. “Provided that nothing like useful knowledge could be gained from them, provided they were all story and no reflection, she had never any objection to books at all.”

— Jane Austen

Featured in: Book Quotes, Quotes About Stories

200. “No one can be really esteemed accomplished who does not greatly surpass what is usually met with.”

— Jane Austen