Top 500 Jane Austen Quotes (2024 Update)
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301. “He certainly is very agreeable, and I give you leave to like him. You have liked many a stupider person.”

— Jane Austen

302. “I am no longer surprised at your knowing only six accomplished women. I rather wonder now at your knowing any.”

— Jane Austen

303. “I mean to be too rich to lament or to feel anything of the sort. A large income is the best recipe for happiness I ever heard of. It certainly may secure all the myrtle and turkey part of it.”

— Jane Austen

304. “I do not think I ever opened a book in my life which had not something to say upon woman’s inconstancy. Songs and proverbs, all talk of woman’s fickleness. But perhaps you will say, these were all written by men.”

— Jane Austen

305. “With women, the heart argues, not the mind.”

— Jane Austen

306. “The most incomprehensible thing in the world to a man, is a woman who rejects his offer of marriage!”

— Jane Austen

307. “Let me thank you again and again, in the name of all my family, for that generous compassion which induced you to take so much trouble, and bear so many mortifications, for the sake of discovering them.” “If you will thank me,” he replied, “let it be for yourself alone. That the wish of giving happiness to you might add force to the other inducements which led me on, I shall not attempt to deny. But your family owe me nothing. Much as I respect them, I believe I thought only of you.” Elizabeth.”

— Jane Austen

308. “Life could do nothing for her, beyond giving time for a better preparation for death.”

— Jane Austen

309. “Elinor agreed with it all, for she did not think he deserved the compliment of rational opposition.”

— Jane Austen

310. “A family of ten children will be always called a fine family, where there are heads and arms and legs enough for the number.”

— Jane Austen

311. “You expect me to account for opinions which you choose to call mine, but which I have never acknowledged.”

— Jane Austen

312. “A scheme of which every part promises delight, can never be successful; and general disappointment is only warded off by the defence of some little peculiar vexation.”

— Jane Austen

313. “You want to tell me, and I have no objection to hearing it.”

— Jane Austen

314. “They parted at last with mutual civility, and possibly a mutual desire of never meeting again.”

— Jane Austen

315. “Follies and nonsense, whims and inconsistencies do divert me, I own, and I laugh at them whenever I can.”

— Jane Austen

316. “The truth is, that in London it is always a sickly season. Nobody is healthy in London, nobody can be.”

— Jane Austen

317. “He is a gentleman, and I am a gentleman’s daughter. So far we are equal.”

— Jane Austen

318. “Children of the same family, the same blood, with the same first associations and habits, have some means of enjoyment in their power, which no subsequent connections can supply...”

— Jane Austen

319. “Dare not say that man forgets sooner than woman, that his love has an earlier death. I have loved none but you.”

— Jane Austen

320. “Mr. Collins is a conceited, pompous, narrow-minded, silly man; you know he is, as well as I do; and you must feel, as well as I do, that the woman who married him cannot have a proper way of thinking.”

— Jane Austen

321. “Here and there, human nature may be great in times of trial, but generally speaking it is its weakness and not its strength that appears in a sick chamber.”

— Jane Austen

322. “One cannot know what a man really is by the end of a fortnight.”

— Jane Austen

323. “A mother would have been always present. A mother would have been a constant friend; her influence would have been beyond all other.”

— Jane Austen

324. “Heaven forbid! – That would be the greatest misfortune of all! – To find a man agreeable whom one is determined to hate! – Do not wish me such an evil.”

— Jane Austen

325. “Young ladies should take care of themselves. Young ladies are delicate plants. They should take care of their health and their complexion. My dear, did you change your stockings?”

— Jane Austen

326. “It is not every man’s fate to marry the woman who loves him best.”

— Jane Austen

327. “What wild imaginations one forms where dear self is concerned! How sure to be mistaken!”

— Jane Austen

328. “I have the highest respect for your nerves, they are my old friends.”

— Jane Austen

329. “She is tolerable, but not handsome enough to tempt me, and I am in no humor at present to give consequence to young ladies who are slighted by other men.”

— Jane Austen

330. “I am sure of this, that if everybody was to drink their bottle a day, there would be not half the disorders in the world there are now. It would be a famous good thing for us all.”

— Jane Austen

331. “I have now attained the true art of letter-writing, which we are always told, is to express on paper exactly what one would say to the same person by word of mouth.”

— Jane Austen

332. “It does not appear to me that my hand is unworthy your acceptance, or that the establishment I can offer would be any other than highly desirable.”

— Jane Austen

333. “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

334. “Without scheming to do wrong, or to make others unhappy, there may be error and there may be misery. Thoughtlessness, want of attention to other people’s feelings, and want of resolution, will do the business.”

— Jane Austen

335. “Cold-hearted Elinor! Oh! Worse than cold-hearted! Ashamed of being otherwise. – Marianne Dashwood.”

— Jane Austen

336. “Fine dancing, I believe like virtue, must be its own reward. Those who are standing by are usually thinking of something very different.”

— Jane Austen

337. “This is an evening of wonders, indeed!”

— Jane Austen

338. “Friendship is certainly the finest balm for the pangs of disappointed love.”

— Jane Austen

339. “And have you never known the pleasure and triumph of a lucky guess? I pity you. I thought you cleverer; for depend upon it, a lucky guess is never merely luck. There is always some talent in it.”

— Jane Austen

340. “Badly done, Emma!”

— Jane Austen

341. “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.”

— Jane Austen

342. “It sometimes is a disadvantage to be so very guarded. If a woman conceals her affection from the object of it, she may loose the opportunity of fixing him.”

— Jane Austen

343. “Business, you know, may bring you money, but friendship hardly ever does.”

— Jane Austen

344. “Far be it from me, my dear sister, to depreciate such pleasures. They would doubtless be congenial with the generality of female minds. But I confess they would have no charms for me. I should infinitely prefer a book.”

— Jane Austen

345. “I am happier than Jane; she only smiles, I laugh. Mr. Darcy sends you all the love in the world, that he can spare from me.”

— Jane Austen

346. “I cannot help thinking that it is more natural to have flowers grow out of the head than fruit.”

— Jane Austen

347. “She was one of those, who, having, once begun, would be always in love.”

— Jane Austen

348. “Well, my comfort is, I am sure Jane will die of a broken heart, and then he will be sorry for what he has done.”

— Jane Austen

349. “How little of permanent happiness could belong to a couple who were only brought together because their passions were stronger than their virtue.”

— Jane Austen

350. “Goldsmith tells us, that when lovely woman stoops to folly, she has nothing to do but to die; and when she stoops to be disagreeable, it is equally to be recommended as a clearer of ill-fame.”

— Jane Austen