Top 500 Jane Austen Quotes (2025 Update)
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301. “Wickedness is always wickedness, but folly is not always folly.”

— Jane Austen

302. “People that marry can never part, but must go and keep house together. People that dance only stand opposite each other in a long room for half an hour.”

— Jane Austen

303. “I never wish to be parted from you from this day on.”

— Jane Austen

304. “Mr. Collins was to attend them, at the request of Mr. Bennet, who was most anxious to get rid of him, and have his library to himself.”

— Jane Austen

305. “I do not believe Mrs. Long will do any such thing. She has two nieces of her own. She is a selfish, hypocritical woman, and I have no opinion of her.”

— Jane Austen

306. “The younger brother must help to pay for the pleasures of the elder.”

— Jane Austen

307. “By the bye, as I must leave off being young, I find many douceurs in being a sort of chaperon, for I am put on the sofa near the fire and can drink as much wine as I like.”

— Jane Austen

308. “Women are the only correspondents to be depended on.”

— Jane Austen

309. “Where the waters do agree, it is quite wonderful the relief they give.”

— Jane Austen

310. “It was a delightful visit;-perfect, in being much too short.”

— Jane Austen

311. “Marriage is indeed a maneuvering business.”

— Jane Austen

312. “He certainly is very agreeable, and I give you leave to like him. You have liked many a stupider person.”

— Jane Austen

313. “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

314. “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

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

— Jane Austen

316. “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

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

— Jane Austen

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

— Jane Austen

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

— Jane Austen

320. “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

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

— Jane Austen

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

— Jane Austen

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

— Jane Austen

324. “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

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

— Jane Austen

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

— Jane Austen

327. “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

328. “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

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

— Jane Austen

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

— Jane Austen

331. “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

332. “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

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

— Jane Austen

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

— Jane Austen

335. “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

336. “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

337. “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

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

— Jane Austen

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

— Jane Austen

340. “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

341. “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

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

— Jane Austen

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

— Jane Austen

344. “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

345. “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

346. “Badly done, Emma!”

— Jane Austen

347. “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

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

— Jane Austen

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

— Jane Austen

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

— Jane Austen