Jane Austen

“A lady, without a family, was the very best preserver of furniture in the world.”

“Nobody minds having what is too good for them.”

“Where people are really attached, poverty itself is wealth.”

“Time will generally lessen the interest of every attachment not within the daily circle.”

“Every impulse of feeling should be guided by reason; and, in my opinion, exertion should always be in proportion to what is required.”

“There could have been no two hearts so open, no tastes so similar, no feelings so in unison”

“[I]f a book is well written, I always find it too short.”

“It was impossible to quarrel with words, whose tremulous inequality showed indisposition so plainly.”

“She hated herself more than she could express.”

“Marianne could never love by halves; and her whole heart became, in time, as much devoted to her husband, as it had once been to Willoughby.”

“I would have everybody marry if they can do it properly: I do not like to have people throw themselves away; but everybody should marry as soon as they can do it to advantage.”

“I must tell you what you will not ask, though I may wish it unsaid the next moment”

“A fondness for reading, properly directed, must be an education in itself.”

“Oh! you are a great deal too apt, you know, to like people in general. You never see fault in any body. All the world are good and agreeable in your eyes. I never heard you speak ill of a human being in my life.""I would wish not to be hasty in censuring any one; but I always speak what I think.”

“...when pain is over, the remembrance of it often becomes a pleasure.”

“But Catherine did not know her own advantages - did not know that a good-looking girl, with an affectionate heart and a very ignorant mind, cannot fail of attracting a clever young man, unless circumstances are particularly untoward.”

“But above all, above respect and esteem, there was a motive within her of good will which could not be overlooked. It was gratitude. -- Gratitude, not merely for having once loved her, but for loving her still well enough, to forgive all the petulance and acrimony of her manner in rejecting him, and all the unjust accusations accompanying her rejection. He who, she had been persuaded, would avoid her as his greatest enemy, seemed, on this accidental meeting, most eager to preserve the acquaintance, and without any indelicate display of regard, or any peculiarity of manner, where their two selves only were concerned, was soliciting the good opinion of her friends, and bent on making her known to his sister.”

“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.”

“If this man had not twelve thousand a year, he would be a very stupid fellow.”

“Mrs. Norris had been talking to her the whole way from Northampton of her wonderful good fortune, and the extraordinary degree of gratitude and good behaviour which it ought to produce, and her consciousness of misery was therefore increased by the idea of its being a wicked thing for her not to be happy.”