Thoughts Through Times: Book Quotes by Jane Austen

In this issue of Quotebook, I invite you to be inspired by a collection of quotes from the books by Jane Austen, the prominent English novelist whose works, filled with wisdom, irony, and wit, have become a part of the transition to 19th-century literary realism. Here, let’s enjoy the thoughts from some of her famous…

Thoughts Through Times: Book Quotes by Jane Austen

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It isn’t what we say or think that defines us, but what we do.

(Jane Austen)

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Silly things do cease to be silly if they are done by sensible people in an impudent way.

(Jane Austen)

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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)

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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)

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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)

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A lady’s imagination is very rapid; it jumps from admiration to love, from love to matrimony in a moment.

(Jane Austen)

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I do not want people to be very agreeable, as it saves me the trouble of liking them a great deal.

(Jane Austen)

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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)

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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.

(Jane Austen)

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Angry people are not always wise.

(Jane Austen)

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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)

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What are men to rocks and mountains?

(Jane Austen)

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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.

(Jane Austen)

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There is nothing like staying at home, for real comfort.

(Jane Austen)

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I must learn to be content with being happier than I deserve.

(Jane Austen)

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I have not the pleasure of understanding you.

(Jane Austen)

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Friendship is certainly the finest balm for the pangs of disappointed love.

(Jane Austen)

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I may have lost my heart, but not my self-control.

(Jane Austen)

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“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.’
‘You are mistaken,’ said he gently, ‘that is not good company, that is the best.”

(Jane Austen)

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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.

(Jane Austen)

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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)

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Life seems but a quick succession of busy nothings.

(Jane Austen)

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“There is, I believe, in every disposition a tendency to some particular evil, a natural defect, which not even the best education can overcome.”
“And your defect is a propensity to hate everybody.”
“And yours,” he replied with a smile, “is wilfully to misunderstand them.”

(Jane Austen)

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“I do not think I ever opened a book in my life which had not something to say upon woman’s inconstancy. Songs and proverbs, all talk of woman’s fickleness. But perhaps you will say, these were all written by men.”
“Perhaps I shall. Yes, yes, if you please, no reference to examples in books. Men have had every advantage of us in telling their own story. Education has been theirs in so much higher a degree; the pen has been in their hands. I will not allow books to prove anything.”

(Jane Austen)

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The distance is nothing when one has a motive.

(Jane Austen)

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I wish, as well as everybody else, to be perfectly happy; but, like everybody else, it must be in my own way.

(Jane Austen)

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Nothing ever fatigues me, but doing what I do not like.

(Jane Austen)

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I have been a selfish being all my life, in practice, though not in principle. As a child I was taught what was right, but I was not taught to correct my temper. I was given good principles, but left to follow them in pride and conceit. Unfortunately an only son (for many years an only child), I was spoilt by my parents, who, though good themselves (my father, particularly, all that was benevolent and amiable), allowed, encouraged, almost taught me to be selfish and overbearing; to care for none beyond my own family circle; to think meanly of all the rest of the world; to wish at least to think meanly of their sense and worth compared with my own. Such I was, from eight to eight and twenty; and such I might still have been but for you, dearest, loveliest Elizabeth! What do I not owe you! You taught me a lesson, hard indeed at first, but most advantageous. By you, I was properly humbled. I came to you without a doubt of my reception. You showed me how insufficient were all my pretensions to please a woman worthy of being pleased.

(Jane Austen)

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Know your own happiness. You want nothing but patience- or give it a more fascinating name, call it hope.

(Jane Austen)

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There are people, who the more you do for them, the less they will do for themselves.

(Jane Austen)

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Nobody can tell what I suffer! But it is always so. Those who do not complain are never pitied.

(Jane Austen)

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One half of the world cannot understand the pleasures of the other.

(Jane Austen)

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

(Jane Austen)

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How quick come the reasons for approving what we like.

(Jane Austen)

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Which of all my important nothings shall I tell you first?

(Jane Austen)

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You must be the best judge of your own happiness.

(Jane Austen)

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It would be mortifying to the feelings of many ladies, could they be made to understand how little the heart of a man is affected by what is costly or new in their attire… 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.

(Jane Austen)

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Let us never underestimate the power of a well-written letter.

(Jane Austen)

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One man’s ways may be as good as another’s, but we all like our own best.

(Jane Austen)

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But people themselves alter so much, that there is something new to be observed in them for ever.

(Jane Austen)

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I was quiet, but I was not blind.

(Jane Austen)

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To wish was to hope, and to hope was to expect.

(Jane Austen)

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There is no charm equal to tenderness of heart.

(Jane Austen)

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Now they were as strangers; worse than strangers, for they could never become acquainted.

(Jane Austen)

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Her pleasure in the walk must arise from the exercise and the day, from the view of the last smiles of the year upon the tawny leaves and withered hedges, and from repeating to herself some few of the thousand poetical descriptions extant of autumn–that season of peculiar and inexhaustible influence on the mind of taste and tenderness–that season which has drawn from every poet worthy of being read some attempt at description, or some lines of feeling.

(Jane Austen)

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“Nothing is more deceitful,” said Darcy, “than the appearance of humility. It is often only carelessness of opinion, and sometimes an indirect boast.”

(Jane Austen)

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We have all a better guide in ourselves, if we would attend to it, than any other person can be.

(Jane Austen)

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Men of sense, whatever you may choose to say, do not want silly wives.

(Jane Austen)

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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)

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There will be little rubs and disappointments everywhere, and we are all apt to expect too much; but then, if one scheme of happiness fails, human nature turns to another; if the first calculation is wrong, we make a second better: we find comfort somewhere.

(Jane Austen)

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Selfishness must always be forgiven you know, because there is no hope of a cure.

(Jane Austen)

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Vanity working on a weak head produces every sort of mischief.

(Jane Austen)

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There are as many forms of love as there are moments in time.

(Jane Austen)

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It’s such a happiness when good people get together.