"I haven't any right to criticize books, and I don't do it except when I hate them. I often want to criticize Jane Austen, but her books madden me so that I can't conceal my frenzy from the reader; and therefore I have to stop every time I begin. Every time I read 'Pride and Prejudice' I want to dig her up and beat her over the skull with her own shin-bone.

Letter to Joseph Twichell, 9/13/1898"
— Mark Twain

"No man is offended by another man's admiration of the woman he loves, it is the woman only who can make it a torment."
— Jane Austen

"No lace - no lace, Mrs. Bennet, I beg of you! - Mr. Bennet"
— Jane Austen (Pride and Prejudice)

"Had I been in love, I could not have been more wretchedly blind. But vanity, not love, has been my folly."
— Jane Austen (Jane Austen: Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park, Persuasion)

"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 (Pride and Prejudice)

""Her heart did whisper that he had done it for her.""
— Jane Austen (Pride and Prejudice)

"Anyone who has the temerity to write about Jane Austen is aware of [two] facts: first, that of all great writers she is the most difficult to catch in the act of greatness; second, that there are twenty-five elderly gentlemen living in the neighbourhood of London who resent any slight upon her genius as if it were an insult to the chastity of their aunts.

(in Athenaeum, December 1923)
"
— Virginia Woolf

"Allegra's Austen wrote about the impact of financial need on the intimate lives of women. If she'd worked in a bookstore, Allegra would have shelved Austen in the horror section."
— Karen Joy Fowler (The Jane Austen Book Club)

"Let us never underestimate the power of a well-written letter."
— Karen Joy Fowler

"For [Jane Austen and the readers of Pride and Prejudice], as for Mr. Darcy, [Elizabeth Bennett's] solitary walks express the independence that literally takes the heroine out of the social sphere of the houses and their inhabitants, into a larger, lonelier world where she is free to think: walking articulates both physical and mental freedom."
— Rebecca Solnit (Wanderlust: A History of Walking)

"I can easily believe it. Women of that class have great opportunities, and if they are intelligent may be well worth listening to. Such varieites of human nature as they are in the habit of witnessing! And it is not merely in its follies, that they are read; for they see it occasionally under every circumstance that can be most interesting or affecting. What instances must pass before them of ardent, disinterested, self-denying attachment, of heroism, fortitude, patience, resignation-- of all the sacrifices that ennoble us most. A sick chamber may often furnish the worth of volumes."
— Jane Austen

"Mr Bennet in Pride & Prejudice,
This is an evening of wonders, indeed!"
— Jane Austen

"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 Pride and Prejudice

"I will only add, God bless you.
-Fitzwilliam Darcy"
— Jane Austen

"Anne smiled and said, "My idea of good company, Mr. Elliot, is the company of clever, well-informed people, who have a great deal of conversation; that is what I call good company." "You are mistaken," said he gently, "that is not good company, that is the best..." "
— Jane Austen (Persuasion)

"Seriously, a thirty-something woman shouldn't be daydreaming about a fictional character in a two-hundred-year-old world to the point where it interfered with her very real and much more important life and relationships. Of course she shouldn't. "
— Shannon Hale

"One does not love a place the less for having suffered in it, unless it has been all suffering, nothing but suffering. "
— Jane Austen

"Jane Austen, who is said to be Shakespearian, never reminds us of Shakespeare, I think, in her full-dress portraits, but she does so in characters such as Miss Bates and Mrs. Allen."
— A.C. Bradley

"'What an excellent father you have, girls!' said she, when the door was shut. 'Such joys are scarce since the good Lord saw fit to close the gates of Hell and doom the dead to walk amongst us.'"
— Seth Grahame-Smith (Pride and Prejudice and Zombies)

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

"Of all the evenings it is possible to spend, a companionable evening with friends is the best."
— Amanda Grange (Mr. Knightley's Diary)

"Jane Austen? Why I go so far as to say that any library is a good library that does not contain a volume by Jane Austen. Even if it contains no other book."
— Mark Twain

""'Whom are you going to dance with?' asked Mr. Knightley.
She hesitated a moment and then replied, 'With you, if you will ask me.'
'Will you?' said he, offering his hand.
'Indeed I will. You have shown that you can dance, and you know we are not really so much brother and sister as to make it at all improper.'
'Brother and sister! no, indeed.'""
— Jane Austen

"I do not want people to be agreeable, as it saves me the trouble of liking them."
— Jane Austen

"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

""Everytime I read Jane Austin, I want to dig up her bones and hit her in the head with her own femur""
— Mark Twain

"The more I see of the world, the more I am dissatisfied with it."
— Jane Austen (Pride and Prejudice)

"If there is a heaven, Jane Austen is sitting in a small room with Mother Teresa and Princess Diana, listening to Duran Duran, forever. If there's a hell, she's standing."
— Roddy Doyle

"Elizabeth Bennet: And that put paid to it. I wonder who first discovered the power of poetry in driving away love?

Mr. Darcy: I thought that poetry was the food of love."
— Jane Austen (Pride and Prejudice)

"I find irony is insult with a smiling face. "
— Judge Langlois Becoming Jane

""How I wished I lived in a Jane Austen novel!"
I said I'd rather be in a Charlotte Brontë.
"Which would be nicest – Jane with a touch of Charlotte, or Charlotte with a touch of Jane?"
This is the kind of discussion I like very much but I wanted to get on with my journal, so I just said: "Fifty per cent each way would be perfect.""
— Dodie Smith (I Capture the Castle)

"There are few people whom I really love, and still fewer of whom I think well."
— Jane Austen

""Did you think of anything when Miss Marcy said Scoatney Hall was being re-opened? I thought of the beginning of Pride and Prejudice – where Mrs. Bennet says 'Netherfield Park is let a last.' And then Mr. Bennet goes over to call on the rich new owner.""
— Dodie Smith (I Capture the Castle)

"I lay it down as a general rule, Harriet, that if a woman doubts as to whether she should accept a man or not, she certainly ought to refuse him.
-Emma Woodhouse"
— Jane Austen (Emma)

"The house seemed to have all the comforts of little Children, dirt and litter."
— Jane Austen

"The wisest and the best of men, nay, the wisest and best of their actions, may be rendered ridiculous by a person whose first object in life is a joke."
— Jane Austen (Pride and Prejudice)

"Captain Harvile: Poor Phoebe, she would not have forgotten him so soon. It was not in her nature.

Anne Elliot: It would not be in the nature of any woman who truly loved.

Captain Harvile: Do you claim that for your sex?

Anne Elliot: We do not forget you as soon as you forget us. We cannot help ourselves. We live at home, quiet, confined, and our feelings prey upon us. You always have business of some sort or other to take you back into the world.

Captain Harvile: I won't allow it to be any more man's nature than women's to be inconstant or to forget those they love or have loved. I believe the reverse. I believe... Let me just observe that all histories are against you, all stories, prose, and verse. I do not think I ever opened a book in my life which did not have something to say on women's fickleness.

Anne Elliot: But they were all written by men. "
— Jane Austen

"As he talked, I watched Emma and wondered what is to become of her. She is of an age to be married but she spends her time with people who are so much older than she, that she is never likely to meet a husband. And if she does, I do not know if she will wish to marry. She is too comfortable where she is. Her father is easy to please and she can do as she likes with the household. A husband will have his own views, and Emma is not likely to take to that way of living."
— Amanda Grange (Mr. Knightley's Diary)

"To a good man, yes, one who knows her in all her moods, who can laugh at her follies and rejoice in her virtues; who will not allow her to give in to her worst instincts; one who knows her, and who, knowing her, will still love her, and love her as she should be loved."
— Amanda Grange (Mr. Knightley's Diary)

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

"To me his prose is unreadable -- like Jane Austin's [sic]. No there is a difference. I could read his prose on salary, but not Jane's. Jane is entirely impossible. It seems a great pity that they allowed her to die a natural death.
- Letter to W. D. Howells, 18 January 1909"
— Mark Twain