Top 500 Jane Austen Quotes (2025 Update)
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201. “Could there be finer symptoms? Is not general incivility the very essence of love?”

— Jane Austen

202. “I have often observed that resignation is never so perfect as when the blessing denied begins to lose somewhat of its value in our eyes.”

— Jane Austen

203. “Yes, vanity is a weakness indeed. But pride – where there is a real superiority of mind, pride will be always under good regulation.”

— Jane Austen

204. “We all love to instruct, though we can teach only what is not worth knowing.”

— Jane Austen

205. “Manners is what holds a society together. At bottom, propriety is concern for other people. When that goes out the window, the gates of hell are shortly opened and ignorance is King.”

— Jane Austen

206. “It is very often nothing but our own vanity that deceives us.”

— Jane Austen

207. “How clever you are, to know something of which you are ignorant.”

— Jane Austen

208. “Do not consider me now as an elegant female intending to plague you, but as a rational creature speaking the truth from her heart.”

— Jane Austen

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

— Jane Austen

210. “A woman of seven and twenty, said Marianne, after pausing a moment, can never hope to feel or inspire affection again.”

— Jane Austen

211. “Mr. Darcy began to feel the danger of paying Elizabeth too much attention.”

— Jane Austen

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

— Jane Austen

213. “Every moment has its pleasures and its hope.”

— Jane Austen

214. “She was convinced that she could have been happy with him, when it was no longer likely they should meet.”

— Jane Austen

215. “What is right to be done cannot be done too soon.”

— Jane Austen

216. “I certainly will not persuade myself to feel more than I do. I am quite enough in love. I should be sorry to be more.”

— Jane Austen

217. “It is particularly incumbent on those who never change their opinion, to be secure of judging properly at first.”

— Jane Austen

218. “Had I not been bound to silence I could have provided proof enough of a broken heart, even for you.”

— Jane Austen

219. “I have never yet found that the advice of a Sister could prevent a young Man’s being in love if he chose it.”

— Jane Austen

220. “That will do extremely well, child. You have delighted us long enough. Let the other young ladies have time to exhibit.”

— Jane Austen

221. “I am sorry to tell you that I am getting very extravagant and spending all my money: and what is worse for you, I have been spending yours too.”

— Jane Austen

222. “To sit in the shade on a fine day and look upon verdure is the most perfect refreshment.”

— Jane Austen

223. “A girl likes to be crossed a little in love now and then. It is something to think of.”

— Jane Austen

224. “Surprises are foolish things. The pleasure is not enhanced, and the inconvenience is often considerable.”

— Jane Austen

225. “We all know him to be a proud, unpleasant sort of man; but this would be nothing if you really liked him.”

— Jane Austen

226. “Yet there it was not love. It was a little fever of admiration; but it might, probably must, end in love with some.”

— Jane Austen

227. “Now they were as strangers; nay worse than strangers, for they could never become acquainted.”

— Jane Austen

228. “Oh, Lizzy! do anything rather than marry without affection.”

— Jane Austen

229. “If I could not be persuaded into doing what I thought wrong, I will never be tricked into it.”

— Jane Austen

230. “Keep your breath to cool your porridge’; and I shall keep mine to swell my song.”

— Jane Austen

231. “But remember that the pain of parting from friends will be felt by everybody at times, whatever be their education or state. Know your own happiness. You want nothing but patience; or give it a more fascinating name: call it hope.”

— Jane Austen

232. “But to appear happy when I am so miserable – Oh! who can require it?”

— Jane Austen

233. “I can recollect nothing more to say at present; perhaps breakfast may assist my ideas. I was deceived – my breakfast supplied only two ideas – that the rolls were good and the butter bad.”

— Jane Austen

234. “You showed me how insufficient were all my pretensions to please a woman worthy of being pleased.”

— Jane Austen

235. “Vanity was the beginning and the end of Sir Walter Elliot’s character; vanity of person and of situation.”

— Jane Austen

236. “The wisest and the best of men, nay, the wisest and best of their actions, may be rendered ridiculous by a person whose first object in life is a joke.”

— Jane Austen

237. “You deserve a longer letter than this; but it is my unhappy fate seldom to treat people so well as they deserve.”

— Jane Austen

238. “Mr. Knightley, if I have not spoken, it is because I am afraid I will awaken myself from this dream.”

— Jane Austen

239. “I never could be so happy as you. Till I have your disposition, your goodness, I never can have your happiness.”

— Jane Austen

240. “Stupid men are the only ones worth knowing after all.”

— Jane Austen

241. “I have been a selfish being all my life, in practice, though not in principle.”

— Jane Austen

242. “We are each of an unsocial, taciturn disposition, unwilling to speak, unless we expect to say something that will amaze the whole room, and be handed down to posterity with all the eclat of a proverb.”

— Jane Austen

243. “Where people are really attached, poverty itself is wealth.”

— Jane Austen

244. “Beware how you give your heart.”

— Jane Austen

245. “No young lady can be justified in falling in love before the gentleman’s love is declared, it must be very improper that a young lady should dream of a gentleman before the gentleman is first known to have dreamt of her.”

— Jane Austen

246. “Everything nourishes what is strong already.”

— Jane Austen

247. “I leave it to be settled, by whomsoever it may concern, whether the tendency of this work be altogether to recommend parental tyranny, or reward filial disobedience.”

— Jane Austen

248. “If any young men come for Mary or Kitty, send them in, for I am quite as leisure.”

— Jane Austen

249. “She is loveliness itself.”

— Jane Austen

250. “The memory is sometimes so retentive, so serviceable, so obedient-at others so bewildered and weak-and at others again, so tyrannic, so beyond control!”

— Jane Austen