Jane Austen (16 December 1775 – 18 July 1817) was an English novelist. She published four novels during her lifetime: Sense and Sensibility (1811), Pride and Prejudice (1813), Mansfield Park (1814) and Emma (1815). She wrote two other novels, Northanger Abbey and Persuasion, both published posthumously in 1818, and began another, eventually titled Sanditon, but died before its completion. She also left behind three volumes of juvenile writings in manuscript, the short epistolary novel Lady Susan, and another unfinished novel, The Watsons.
The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid.To sit in the shade on a fine day and look upon verdure is the most perfect refreshment.Life seems but a quick succession of busy nothings.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.In vain have I 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.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.I do not want people to be very agreeable, as it saves me the trouble of liking them a great deal.A lady's imagination is very rapid; it jumps from admiration to love, from love to matrimony in a moment.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.There is no charm equal to tenderness of heart.Next week I shall begin my operations on my hat, on which you know my principal hopes of happiness depend.It isn’t what we say or think that defines us, but what we do.The more I know of the world, the more I am convinced that I shall never see a man whom I can really love. I require so much!I cannot fix on the hour, or the spot, or the look or the words, which laid the foundation. It is too long ago. I was in the middle before I knew that I had begun.Selfishness must always be forgiven you know, because there is no hope of a cure.It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.To be fond of dancing was a certain step towards falling in love.We are to have a tiny party here tonight. I hate tiny parties, they force one into constant exertion.
There are few people whom I really love, and still fewer of whom I think well. The more I see of the world, the more am I dissatisfied with it; and every day confirms my belief of the inconsistency of all human characters, and of the little dependence that can be placed on the appearance of merit or sense.
Jane Austen
Angry people are not always wise.There are people, who the more you do for them, the less they will do for themselves.There is a stubbornness about me that never can bear to be frightened at the will of others. My courage always rises at every attempt to intimidate me.Let other pens dwell on guilt and misery.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. An unhappy alternative is before you, Elizabeth. From this day you must be a stranger to one of your parents. Your mother will never see you again if you do not marry Mr. Collins, and I will never see you again if you do.There is safety in reserve, but no attraction. One cannot love a reserved person.But for my own part, if a book is well written, I always find it too short.You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope... I have loved none but you!What are men to rocks and mountains?Ah! There is nothing like staying at home, for real comfort.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.Laugh as much as you choose, but you will not laugh me out of my opinion.Indulge your imagination in every possible flight.Friendship is certainly the finest balm for the pangs of disappointed love.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.For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbors, and laugh at them in our turn?I could easily forgive his pride, if he had not mortified mine.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.Nobody minds having what is too good for them.Vanity working on a weak head, produces every sort of mischief.We have all a better guide in ourselves, if we would attend to it, than any other person can be.Let me know when you begin the new tea, and the new white wine. My present elegancies have not yet made me indifferent to such matters. I am still a cat if I see a mouse.One half of the world cannot understand the pleasures of the other.Know your own happiness. You want nothing but patience; or give it a more fascinating name: call it hope.
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.
Jane Austen
A large income is the best recipe for happiness I ever heard of.I must learn to be content with being happier than I deserve.Silly things do cease to be silly if they are done by sensible people in an impudent way.The Very first moment I beheld him, my heart was irrevocably gone.If I loved you less, I might be able to talk about it more.I have not the pleasure of understanding you.
You are too generous to trifle with me. If your feelings are still what they were last April, tell me so at once. My affections and wishes are unchanged; but one word from you will silence me on this subject for ever.
Jane Austen
What is right to be done, cannot be done too soon.Where an opinion is general, it is usually correct.Those who do not complain are never pitied.All the privilege I claim for my own sex (it is not a very enviable one: you need not covet it), is that of loving longest, when existence or when hope is gone!You must learn some of my philosophy. Think only of the past as its remembrance gives you pleasure.
I could no more write a romance than an epic poem. I could not sit seriously down to write a serious romance under any other motive than to save my life; and if it were indispensable for me to keep it up and never relax into laughing at myself or other people, I am sure I should be hung before I had finished the first chapter. No, I must keep to my own style and go on in my own way; and though I may never succeed again in that, I am convinced that I should totally fail in any other.
Jane Austen
I may have lost my heart, but not my self-control.I always deserve the best treatment because I never put up with any other.I am the happiest creature in the world. Perhaps other people have said so before, but not one with such justice. I am happier even than Jane; she only smiles, I laugh.
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
From the very beginning—from the first moment, I may almost say—of my acquaintance with you, your manners, impressing me with the fullest belief of your arrogance, your conceit, and your selfish disdain of the feelings of others, were such as to form the groundwork of disapprobation on which succeeding events have built so immovable a dislike; and I had not known you a month before I felt that you were the last man in the world whom I could ever be prevailed on to marry.
Jane Austen
Till this moment I never knew myself.He is a gentleman, and I am a gentleman's daughter. So far we are equal.We all know him to be a proud, unpleasant sort of man; but this would be nothing if you really liked him.My good opinion once lost is lost forever.If I could but know his heart, everything would become easy.A girl likes to be crossed a little in love now and then. It is something to think of.The distance is nothing when one has a motive.There could have been no two hearts so open, no tastes so similar, no feelings so in unison.
It is not time or opportunity that is to determine intimacy; it is disposition alone. Seven years would be insufficient to make some people acquainted with each other, and seven days are more than enough for others.
Jane Austen
Nothing ever fatigues me, but doing what I do not like.
