Quotes by Jane Austen

“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, "tha...”

“You feel, I suppose, that, in losing Isabella, you lose half yourself: you feel a void in your heart which nothing else can occupy. Society is becoming irksome; and as for the amusements in which y...”

“But one never does form a just idea of anybody beforehand. One takes up a notion and runs away with it.”

“It was absolutely necessary to interrupt him now.”

“I have not yet tranquillised myself enough to see Frederica.”

“You men have none of you any hearts.''If we have not hearts, we have eyes; and they give us torment enough.”

“Her [Mrs Croft's] manners were open, easy, and decided, like one who had no distrust of herself, and no doubts of what to do; without any approach to coarseness, however, or any want of good humour...”

“... a whole day’s tête-à-tête between two women can never end without a quarrel.”

“…for what after all is Youth and Beauty?”

“Emma has been meaning to read more ever since she was twelve years old. I have seen a great many lists of her drawingup at various times of books that she meant to read regularly through—and very g...”

“The promised notification was hanging over her head. The postman's knock within the neighbourhood was beginning to bring its daily terrors -and if reading could banish the idea for even half an hou...”

“...And if reading could banish the idea for even half an hour, it was something gained.”

“Fanny spoke her feelings. "Here's harmony!" said she; "here's repose! Here's what may leave all painting and all music behind, and what may tranquillise every care, and lift the heart to rapture! W...”

“Landscapes we must owe something to the eye of the beholder.”

“I am worn out with civility. I have been talking incessantly all night, and with nothing to say. But with you there may be peace. You will not want to be talked to. Let us have the luxury of silence.”

“And such is your definition of matrimony and dancing. Taken in that light, certainly their resemblance is not striking; but I think I could place them in such a view. You will allow that in both ma...”

“The most incomprehensible thing in the world to a man, is a woman who rejects his offer of marriage!”

“I pay very little regard," said Mrs. Grant, "to what any young person says on the subject of marriage. If they profess a disinclination for it, I only set it down that they have not yet seen the ri...”

“Luck which so often defies anticipation in matrimonial affairs, giving attraction to what is moderate rather than to what is superior.”

“With such a worshipping wife, it was hardly possible that any natural defects in it should not be increased. The extreme sweetness of her temper must hurt his.”