Quotes by Jane Austen

“Woman is fine for her own satisfaction alone. No man will admire her the more, no woman will like her the better for it. Neatness and fashion are enough for the former, and a something of shabbiness or impropriety will be most endearing to the latter.”

“To look almost pretty is an acquisition of higher delight to a girl who has been looking plain for the first fifteen years of her life than a beauty from her cradle can ever receive.”

“A large income is the best recipe for happiness I ever heard of.”

“We do not look in our great cities for our best morality.”

“One man's ways may be as good as another's, but we all like our own best.”

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

“Give a girl an education and introduce her properly into the world, and ten to one but she has the means of settling well, without further expense to anybody.”

“Men have had every advantage of us in telling their own story. Education has been theirs in so much higher a degree the pen has been in their hands. I will not allow books to prove anything.”

“Selfishness must always be forgiven you know, because there is no hope of a cure.”

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

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

“The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid.”

“My idea of good company is the company of clever, well-informed people who have a great deal of conversation that is what I call good company.”

“I do not want people to be very agreeable, as it saves me the trouble of liking them a great deal.”

“Happiness in marriage is entirely a matter of chance.”

“There is nothing like staying at home for real comfort.”

“A lady's imagination is very rapid it jumps from admiration to love, from love to matrimony in a moment.”

“It is always incomprehensible to a man that a woman should ever refuse an offer of marriage.”

“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.”

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

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

“Human nature is so well disposed towards those who are in interesting situations, that a young person, who either marries or dies, is sure of being kindly spoken of.”

“From politics, it was an easy step to silence.”

“Respect for right conduct is felt by every body.”

“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.”

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

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

“There are certainly not so many men of large fortune in the world, as there are pretty women to deserve them.”

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