"The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid."
— Jane Austen (Northanger Abbey)

"I declare after all there is no enjoyment like reading! How much sooner one tires of any thing than of a book! -- When I have a house of my own, I shall be miserable if I have not an excellent library."
— Jane Austen (Pride and Prejudice)

"You must know... surely, you must know it was all for you. You are too generous to trifle with me. I believe you spoke with my aunt last night, and it has taught me to hope as I'd scarcely allowed myself before. If your feelings are still what they were last April, tell me so at once. My affections and wishes have not changed, but one word from you will silence me forever. If, however, your feelings have changed, I will have to tell you: you have bewitched me, body and soul, and I love, I love, I love you. I never wish to be parted from you from this day on."
— Jane Austen (Pride and Prejudice)

"Ah! There is nothing like staying at home, for real comfort."
— Jane Austen

"For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbors, and laugh at them in our turn?"
— Jane Austen (Pride and Prejudice)

"What are men to rocks and mountains?"
— Jane Austen (Pride and Prejudice)

"It is only a novel... or, in short, only some work in which the greatest powers of the mind are displayed, in which the most thorough knowledge of human nature, the happiest delineation of its varieties, the liveliest effusions of wit and humour, are conveyed to the world in the best-chosen language"
— Jane Austen (Northanger Abbey)

"Vanity and pride are different things, though the words are often used synonymously. A person may be proud without being vain. Pride relates more to our opinion of ourselves, vanity to what we would have others think of us."
— Jane Austen (Pride and Prejudice)

"Nothing ever fatigues me, but doing what I do not like."
— Jane Austen

"I can listen no longer in silence. I must speak to you by such means as are within my reach. You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope. Tell me not that I am too late, that such precious feelings are gone for ever. I offer myself to you again with a heart even more your own than when you almost broke it, eight years and a half ago. Dare not say that man forgets sooner than woman, that his love has an earlier death. I have loved none but you. Unjust I may have been, weak and resentful I have been, but never inconstant. You alone have brought me to Bath. For you alone, I think and plan. Have you not seen this? Can you fail to have understood my wishes? I had not waited even these ten days, could I have read your feelings, as I think you must have penetrated mine. I can hardly write. I am every instant hearing something which overpowers me. You sink your voice, but I can distinguish the tones of that voice when they would be lost on others. Too good, too excellent creature! You do us justice, indeed. You do believe that there is true attachment and constancy among men. Believe it to be most fervent, most undeviating, in F. W.

I must go, uncertain of my fate; but I shall return hither, or follow your party, as soon as possible. A word, a look, will be enough to decide whether I enter your father's house this evening or never.

Captain Wentworth to Anne Elliot"
— Jane Austen (Persuasion)

"Perhaps it it our imperfections that make us so perfect for one another!"
— Jane Austen (Emma)

"What strange creatures brothers are!"
— Jane Austen

"In vain I have struggled. It will not do! My feelings will not be repressed. You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you... Almost from the earliest moments of your acquaintance, I have come to feel for you a passionate admiration and regard, which despite my struggles, has overcome every rational objection. And I beg you, most fervently, to relieve my suffering and consent to be my wife."
— Jane Austen (Pride and Prejudice)

"There is nothing I would not do for those who are really my friends. I have no notion of loving people by halves, it is not my nature."
— Jane Austen (Northanger Abbey)

"Friendship is certainly the finest balm for the pangs of disappointed love."
— Jane Austen

"In vain have I struggled but it will not do, my feelings will not be repressed. You must allow me to tell you, how much I love and admire you."
— Jane Austen

"Angry people are not always wise."
— Jane Austen (Pride and Prejudice)

"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."
— Jane Austen

"I have faults enough, but they are not, I hope, of understanding. My temper I dare not vouch for. It is, I believe, too little yielding— certainly too little for the convenience of the world. I cannot forget the follies and vices of other so soon as I ought, nor their offenses against myself. My feelings are not puffed about with every attempt to move them. My temper would perhaps be called resentful. My good opinion once lost, is lost forever."
— Jane Austen (Pride and Prejudice)

"My idea of good company. . . is the company of clever, well-informed people, who have a great deal of conversation."
— Jane Austen

"I may have lost my heart, but not my self-control. "
— Jane Austen (Emma)

"Stupid men are the only ones worth knowing after all."
— Jane Austen

"Indeed, I am very sorry to be right in this instance. I would much rather have been merry than wise."
— Jane Austen (Emma)

"Miss Bingley: Miss Eliza Bennet, let me persuade you to follow my example and take a turn about the room. It's so refreshing. - Will you not join us, Mr Darcy?

Mr. Darcy: That would defeat the object.

Miss Bingley: What do you mean, sir? What on earth can he mean?

Elizabeth Bennet: I think we would do better not to inquire.

Miss Bingley: Nay, we insist on knowing your meaning, sir.

Mr. Darcy: Well, that your figures appear to best advantage when walking and that I might best admire them from my present position.

Miss Bingley: Shocking, abominable reply! How shall we punish him, Miss Eliza?

Elizabeth Bennet: Nothing so easy. Tease him, laugh at him.

Miss Bingley: Laugh at Mr. Darcy? Impossible, he is a man without fault.

from "Pride and Prejudice", 1995 BBC version"
— Jane Austen (Pride and Prejudice)

"The Very first moment I beheld him, my heart was irrevocably gone."
— Jane Austen (Love and Friendship: And Other Early Works)

"One half of the world cannot understand the pleasures of the other."
— Jane Austen

""It's been many years since I had such an exemplary vegetable.""
— Jane Austen (Pride and Prejudice)

"I have not the pleasure of understanding you."
— Jane Austen (Pride and Prejudice)

"You have delighted us quite enough."
— Jane Austen

"Men of sense, whatever you may choose to say, do not want silly wives."
— Jane Austen (Emma)

""I could easily forgive his pride, if he had not mortified mine."
Elizabeth Bennet"
— Jane Austen

"When I fall in love, it will be forever."
— Jane Austen (Sense and Sensibility)

"One cannot be always laughing at a man without now and then stumbling on something witty."
— Jane Austen (Pride and Prejudice)

"To sit in the shade on a fine day, and look upon verdure is the most perfect refreshment."
— Jane Austen

"Do not give way to useless alarm; though it is right to be prepared for the worst, there is no occasion to look on it as certain."
— Jane Austen (Pride and Prejudice)

""...but for my own part, if a book is well written, I always find it too short." "
— Jane Austen

"All the privilege I claim..is that of loving longest,when existence or when hope is gone."
— Jane Austen

"I am only resolved to act in a manner which will constitute my own happiness without reference to you or any person so wholly unconnected with me."
— Jane Austen (Pride and Prejudice)

"Insufferable man!"
— Jane Austen

"I hate to hear you talk about all women as if they were fine ladies instead of rational creatures. None of us want to be in calm waters all our lives."
— Jane Austen

"It is well to have as many holds upon happiness as possible."
— Jane Austen (Northanger Abbey)

"How I wished I lived in a Jane Austen novel!"
— Dodie Smith (I Capture the Castle)

""How quick come the reasons for approving what we like.""
— Jane Austen (Persuasion)

"Let other pens dwell on guilt and misery."
— Jane Austen

"If I could not be persuaded into doing what I thought wrong, I will never be tricked into it."
— Jane Austen (Northanger Abbey)

"Follies and nonsense, whims and inconsistencies do divert me, I own, and I laugh at them whenever I can."
— Jane Austen (Pride and Prejudice)

"If I could but know his heart, everything would become easy."
— Jane Austen (Sense and Sensibility)

"She is tolerable, but not handsome enough to tempt me, and I an in no humor at present to give consequence to young ladies who are slighted by other men."
— Jane Austen (Pride and Prejudice)

"Can he love her? Can the soul really be satisfied with such polite affections? To love is to burn - to be on fire, like Juliet or Guinevere or Eloise..."
— Jane Austen (Sense and Sensibility)

"“I might as well enquire,” replied she, “why with so evident a design of offending and insulting me, you chose to tell me that you liked me against your will, against your reason, and even against your character?” "
— Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice