Top 500 Jane Austen Quotes (2023 Update)
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351. “Whatever bears affinity to cunning is despicable.”

— Jane Austen

352. “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

353. “I am going to take a heroine whom no one but myself will much like.”

— Jane Austen

354. “I begin already to weigh my words and sentences more than I did, and am looking about for a sentiment, an illustration, or a metaphor in every corner of the room. Could my Ideas flow as fast as the rain in the Storecloset it would be charming.”

— Jane Austen

355. “Did not you? I did for you. But that is one great difference between us. Compliments always take you by surprise, and me never.”

— Jane Austen

356. “An agreeable manner may set off handsome features, but can never alter plain ones.”

— Jane Austen

357. “I am not fond of the idea of my shrubberies being always approachable.”

— Jane Austen

358. “One cannot be always laughing at a man without now and then stumbling on something witty.”

— Jane Austen

359. “A mind lively and at ease, can do with seeing nothing, and can see nothing that does not answer.”

— Jane Austen

360. “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 they the result of previous study?”

— Jane Austen

361. “What one means one day, you know, one may not mean the next. Circumstances change, opinions alter.”

— Jane Austen

362. “Time will generally lessen the interest of every attachment not within the daily circle.”

— Jane Austen

363. “Next to being married, a girl likes to be crossed in love a little now and then.”

— Jane Austen

364. “Marianne Dashwood was born to an extraordinary fate. She was born to discover the falsehood of her own opinions, and to counteract, by her conduct, her most favourite maxims.”

— Jane Austen

365. “Had I been in love, I could not have been more wretchedly blind. But vanity, not love, has been my folly.”

— Jane Austen

366. “We are told to “despair of nothing we would attain,” as “unwearied diligence our point would gain.”

— Jane Austen

367. “General benevolence, but not general friendship, made a man what he ought to be.”

— Jane Austen

368. “What praise is more valuable than the praise of an intelligent servant?”

— Jane Austen

369. “One cannot fix one’s eyes on the commonest natural production without finding food for a rambling fancy.”

— Jane Austen

370. “I have been meditating on the very great pleasure which a pair of fine eyes in the face of a pretty woman can bestow.”

— Jane Austen

371. “I cannot think well of a man who sports with any woman’s feelings; and there may often be a great deal more suffered than a stander-by can judge of.”

— Jane Austen

372. “A lady, without a family, was the very best preserver of furniture in the world.”

— Jane Austen

373. “When any two young people take it into their heads to marry, they are pretty sure by perseverance to carry their point, be they ever so poor, or ever so imprudent, or ever so little likely to be necessary to each other’s ultimate comfort.”

— Jane Austen

374. “You were disgusted with the women who were always speaking and looking, and thinking for your approbation alone. I roused, and interested you, because I was so unlike them.”

— Jane Austen

375. “The post office has a great charm at one point of our lives. When you have lived to my age, you will begin to think letters are never worth going through the rain for.”

— Jane Austen

376. “They gave themselves up wholly to their sorrow, seeking increase of wretchedness in every reflection that could afford it, and resolved against ever admitting consolation in future.”

— Jane Austen

377. “If this man had not twelve thousand a year, he would be a very stupid fellow.”

— Jane Austen

378. “I think I may boast myself to be, with all possible vanity, the most unlearned and uninformed female who ever dared to be an authoress.”

— Jane Austen

379. “From all that I can collect by your manner of talking, you must be two of the silliest girls in the country. I have suspected it some time, but I am now convinced.”

— Jane Austen

380. “One does not love a place the less for having suffered in it, unless it has been all suffering, nothing but suffering.”

— Jane Austen

381. “Are the shades of Pemberley to be thus polluted?”

— Jane Austen

382. “It is not everyone,? said Elinor, ’who has your passion for dead leaves.”

— Jane Austen

383. “A man would always wish to give a woman a better home than the one he takes her from; and he who can do it, where there is no doubt of her regard, must, I think, be the happiest of mortals.”

— Jane Austen

384. “Good-humoured, unaffected girls, will not do for a man who has been used to sensible women. They are two distinct orders of being.”

— Jane Austen

385. “Nobody is healthy in London, nobody can be.”

— Jane Austen

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

— Jane Austen

387. “You must really begin to harden yourself to the idea of being worth looking at.”

— Jane Austen

388. “We certainly do not forget you, so soon as you forget us. It is, perhaps, our fate rather than our merit. We cannot help ourselves.”

— Jane Austen

389. “Let other pens dwell on guilt and misery. I quit such odious subjects as soon as I can, impatient to restore everybody not greatly in fault themselves to tolerable comfort, and to have done with all the rest.”

— Jane Austen

390. “At my time of life opinions are tolerably fixed. It is not likely that I should now see or hear anything to change them.”

— Jane Austen

391. “Oh! do not attack me with your watch. A watch is always too fast or too slow. I cannot be dictated to by a watch.”

— Jane Austen

392. “We live at home, quiet, confined, and our feelings prey upon us.”

— Jane Austen

393. “In nine cases out of ten, a woman had better show more affection than she feels.”

— Jane Austen

394. “The mere habit of learning to love is the thing; and a teachableness of disposition in a young lady is a great blessing.”

— Jane Austen

395. “No: the years which had destroyed her youth and bloom had only given him a more glowing, manly, open look, in no respect lessening his personal advantages. She had seen the same Frederick Wentworth.”

— Jane Austen

396. “Miss Morland, no one can think more highly of the understanding of women than I do. In my opinion, nature has given them so much, that they never find it necessary to use more than half.”

— Jane Austen

397. “No- I cannot talk of books in a ballroom; my head is always full of something else.”

— Jane Austen

398. “He then departed, to make himself still more interesting, in the midst of a heavy rain.”

— Jane Austen

399. “A persuadable temper might sometimes be as much in favour of happiness as a very resolute character.”

— Jane Austen

400. “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