The Complete Novels Quotes

“morning;”
― Jane Austen, The Complete Novels

“I now perceive that it will be a very unfortunate one for Harriet. You will puff her up with such ideas of her own beauty, and of what she has a claim to, that, in a little while, nobody within her reach will be good enough for her. Vanity working on a weak head, produces every sort of mischief. Nothing so easy as for a young lady to raise her expectations too high. Miss Harriet Smith may not find offers of marriage flow in so fast, though she is a very pretty girl. Men of sense, whatever you may chuse to say, do not want silly wives. Men of family would not be very fond of connecting themselves with a girl of such obscurity — and most prudent men would be afraid of the inconvenience and disgrace they might be involved in, when the mystery of her parentage came to be revealed. Let her marry Robert Martin, and she is safe, respectable, and happy for ever; but if you encourage her to expect to marry greatly, and teach her to be satisfied with nothing less than a man of consequence and large fortune, she may be a parlour-boarder at Mrs. Goddard’s all the rest of her life — or, at least, (for Harriet Smith is a girl who will marry somebody or other,) till she grow desperate, and is glad to catch at the old writing-master’s son.”
― Jane Austen, The Complete Novels

“His pride,” said Miss Lucas, “does not offend me so much as pride often does, because there is an excuse for it. One cannot wonder that so very fine a young man, with family, fortune, everything in his favour, should think highly of himself.”
― Jane Austen, The Complete Novels

“If any one faculty of our nature may be called more wonderful than the rest, I do think it is memory. There seems something more speakingly incomprehensible in the powers, the failures, the inequalities of memory, than in any other of our intelligences.”
― Jane Austen, The Complete Novels

“It is certainly an unpleasant thing,” replied Mr. Dashwood, “to have those kind of yearly drains on one’s income. One’s fortune, as your mother justly says, is NOT one’s own. To be tied down to the regular payment of such a sum, on every rent day, is by no means desirable: it takes away one’s independence.”
― Jane Austen, The Complete Novels

“Her systems have all the unfortunate tendency of setting propriety at nought;”
― Jane Austen, The Complete Novels

“and a better acquaintance with the world is what I look forward to as her greatest possible advantage.”
― Jane Austen, The Complete Novels

“In seasons of cheerfulness, no temper could be more cheerful than hers, or possess, in a greater degree, that sanguine expectation of happiness which is happiness itself.”
― Jane Austen, The Complete Novels

“It seems to me to show an abominable sort of conceited independence,”
― Jane Austen, The Complete Novels

“There has been a solemn engagement between them ever since October—formed at Weymouth, and kept a secret from every body.”
― Jane Austen, The Complete Works of Jane Austen: (In One Volume) Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park, Emma, Northanger Abbey, Persuasion, Lady ... Sandition, and the Complete Juvenilia

“Mr. Elton was in being in the same room at once with the woman he had just married, the woman he had wanted to marry, and the woman whom he had been expected to marry,”
― Jane Austen, The Complete Works of Jane Austen: (In One Volume) Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park, Emma, Northanger Abbey, Persuasion, Lady ... Sandition, and the Complete Juvenilia

“Harriet Smith was the natural daughter of somebody.”
― Jane Austen, The Complete Works of Jane Austen: (In One Volume) Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park, Emma, Northanger Abbey, Persuasion, Lady ... Sandition, and the Complete Juvenilia

“se’nnight.”
― Jane Austen, Jane Austen: The Complete Novels

“pride, indeed, there was, perhaps, scarcely enough; his indifference to a confusion of rank, bordered too much on inelegance of mind.”
― Jane Austen, Jane Austen: The Complete Novels

“wound from the want of”
― Jane Austen, Jane Austen: The Complete Novels

“the beauty of truth and sincerity in all our dealings”
― Jane Austen, Jane Austen - Complete Works: All novels, short stories, letters and poems (NTMC Classics): Emma, Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility, Northanger ... and Lady Susan

“the beauty of truth and sincerity in all our dealings with each other?”
― Jane Austen, Jane Austen - Complete Works: All novels, short stories, letters and poems (NTMC Classics): Emma, Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility, Northanger ... and Lady Susan

“It is only by seeing women in their own homes, among their own set, just as they always are, that you can form any just judgment. Short of that, it is all guess and luck— and will generally be ill-luck. How many a man has committed himself on a short acquaintance, and rued it all the rest of his life!”
― Jane Austen, Jane Austen - Complete Works: All novels, short stories, letters and poems (NTMC Classics): Emma, Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility, Northanger ... and Lady Susan

“Books of engravings, drawers of medals, cameos, corals, shells, and every other family collection within his cabinets, had been prepared for his old friend, to while away the morning;”
― Jane Austen, Jane Austen - Complete Works: All novels, short stories, letters and poems (NTMC Classics): Emma, Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility, Northanger ... and Lady Susan

“She did not mean to have her own affections entangled again, and it would be incumbent on her to avoid any encouragement of his. She wished she might be able to keep him from an absolute declaration. That would be so very painful a conclusion of their present acquaintance! and yet, she could not help rather anticipating something decisive. She felt as if the spring would not pass without bringing a crisis, an event, a something to alter her present composed and tranquil state.”
― Jane Austen, Jane Austen - Complete Works: All novels, short stories, letters and poems (NTMC Classics): Emma, Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility, Northanger ... and Lady Susan

“it is not every man's fate to marry the woman who loves him best. Miss Hawkins perhaps wanted a home, and thought this the best offer she was likely to have.”
― Jane Austen, Jane Austen - Complete Works: All novels, short stories, letters and poems (NTMC Classics): Emma, Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility, Northanger ... and Lady Susan

“Emma perceived that the nature of his gallantry was a little self-willed,”
― Jane Austen, Jane Austen - Complete Works: All novels, short stories, letters and poems (NTMC Classics): Emma, Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility, Northanger ... and Lady Susan

“I could not excuse a man's having more music than love—more ear than eye—a more acute sensibility to fine sounds than to my feelings.”
― Jane Austen, Jane Austen - Complete Works: All novels, short stories, letters and poems (NTMC Classics): Emma, Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility, Northanger ... and Lady Susan

“a sort of pleasure in the idea of their being coupled in their friends' imaginations”
― Jane Austen, Jane Austen - Complete Works: All novels, short stories, letters and poems (NTMC Classics): Emma, Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility, Northanger ... and Lady Susan

“—I am sure nobody ought to be, or can be, a greater advocate for matrimony than I am;”
― Jane Austen, Jane Austen - Complete Works: All novels, short stories, letters and poems (NTMC Classics): Emma, Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility, Northanger ... and Lady Susan

“have been so grieved for you.—I could not imagine how you could possibly do without her.—It is a sad change indeed.—But I hope she is pretty well, sir.”
― Jane Austen, Jane Austen - Complete Works: All novels, short stories, letters and poems (NTMC Classics): Emma, Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility, Northanger ... and Lady Susan

“Emma has been meaning to read more ever since she was twelve years old. I have seen a great many lists of her drawing-up at various times of books that she meant to read regularly through—and very good lists they were—very well chosen, and very neatly arranged—sometimes alphabetically, and sometimes by some other rule. The list she drew up when only fourteen—I remember thinking it did her judgment so much credit,”
― Jane Austen, Jane Austen - Complete Works: All novels, short stories, letters and poems (NTMC Classics): Emma, Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility, Northanger ... and Lady Susan

“They will read together.”
― Jane Austen, Jane Austen - Complete Works: All novels, short stories, letters and poems (NTMC Classics): Emma, Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility, Northanger ... and Lady Susan

“her inclination for good company, and power of appreciating what was elegant and clever, shewed that there was no want of taste, though strength of understanding must not be expected.”
― Jane Austen, Jane Austen - Complete Works: All novels, short stories, letters and poems (NTMC Classics): Emma, Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility, Northanger ... and Lady Susan

“With an alacrity beyond the common impulse of a spirit which yet was never indifferent to the credit of doing every thing well and attentively, with the real good-will of a mind delighted with its own ideas,”
― Jane Austen, Jane Austen - Complete Works: All novels, short stories, letters and poems (NTMC Classics): Emma, Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility, Northanger ... and Lady Susan