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Life Quotes by Jane Austen

67 Life quotes by Jane Austen

All Life quotes Jane Austen’s page

Austen’s love of a good book shines through when she says a day without reading feels useless. She also shares moments of joy, like the happiest hours spent with a dear friend or aboard a ship. Finally, she warns that knowing too much about a partner’s flaws can hurt a long life together.

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“I beg your pardon; one knows exactly what to think.”

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Angry people are not always wise.

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Without music, life would be a blank to me.

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“... consequence has its tax;...”

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The sooner every party breaks up the better.

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Life seems but a quick succession of busy nothings.

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“Shall I ask you how the church is to be filled, if a man is neither to take orders with a living,…

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They are much to be pitied who have not been given a taste for nature early in life.

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“A very narrow income has a tendency to contract the mind, and sour the temper.”

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

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Oh! I am delighted with the book! I should like to spend my whole life in reading it.

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“I have observed...in the course of my life, that if things are going outwardly one month, they are sure to mend the…

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it is better to know as little as possible of the defects of the person with whom you are to pass your…

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I have been a selfish being all my life, in practice, though not in principle.

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“supposed her born to be an heroine. Her situation in life, the character of her father and mother, her own person and…

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“She is not well, she has had a nervous complaint on her for several weeks.' 'I am sorry for that. At her…

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“It sometimes happens that a woman is handsomer at twenty-nine than she was ten years before; and, generally speaking, if there has…

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“I am going to-morrow where I shall find a man who has not one agreeable quality, who has neither manner nor sense…

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“Reluctantly, and with much hesitation, did she then begin what might perhaps, at the end of half an hour, be termed, by…

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“It is a lovely night, and they are much to be pitied who have not been taught to feel in some degree…

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The wisest and the best of men, nay, the wisest and best of their actions, may be rendered ridiculous by a person…

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Emma Woodhouse, handsome, clever, and rich, with a comfortable home and happy disposition, seemed to unite some of the best blessings of…

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“I never saw quite so wretched an example of what a sea-faring life can do: but to a degree, I know it…

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“He had, in fact, though his sisters were now doing all they could for him, by calling him "poor Richard," been nothing…

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You think me foolish to call instruction a torment, but if you had been as much used as myself to hear poor…

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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…

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“Never did I see such an affecting Scene as was the meeting of Edward and Augustus. 'My Life! my Soul!' (exclaimed the…

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Her family had of late been exceedingly fluctuating. For many years of her life she had had two sons; but the crime…

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I could not sit seriously down to write a serious Romance under any other motive than to save my life, & if…

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“Sir Edward's great object in life was to be seductive. With such personal advantages as he knew himself to possess, and such…

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“Perhaps you are not sitting in this room, and I am not sitting by you. These are points in which a doubt…

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“No one who had ever seen Catherine Morland in her infancy would have supposed her born to be an heroine. Her situation…

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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…

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“Miss Bates…had never boasted either beauty or cleverness. Her youth had passed without distinction, and her middle of life was devoted to…

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“My fingers", said Elizabeth, "do not move over this instrument in the masterly manner which I see so many women's do. They…

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“What a good-for-nothing-fellow Charles is to bespeak the stockings - I hope he will be too hot all the rest of his…

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“Sir Thomas was indeed the life of the party, who at his suggestion now seated themselves round the fire.”

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“At my time of life opinions are tolerably fixed. It is not likely that I should now see or hear any thing…

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“[T]hey are much to be pitied who have not ... been given a taste for Nature in early life. They lose a…

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Life could do nothing for her, beyond giving time for a better preparation for death.

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More by Jane Austen

Let us have the luxury of silence.

“How earnestly did she then wish that her former opinions had been more reasonable, more moderate!”

“it is very well worth-while to be tormented for two or three years of one's life, for the sake of being able to read…

“Everybody is taken in at some period or another. [...] In marriage especially. [...] There is not one in a hundred of either sex,…

She knew that what Marianne and her mother conjectured one moment, they believed the next: that with them, to wish was to hope, and…

“…for I look upon the Frasers to be about as unhappy as most other married people.”

“It raises my spleen more than any thing, to have the pretence of being asked, of being given a choice, and at the same…

her spirits wanted the solitude and silence which only numbers could give.

“But in such cases as these a good memory is unpardonable.”

“...the pleasantness of an employment does not always evince its propriety.”

Such squeamish youths as cannot bear to be connected with a little absurdity are not worth a regret.

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

“Lady Catherine seemed quite astonished at not receiving a direct answer; and Elizabeth suspected herself to be the first creature who had ever dared…

“He had suffered, and he had learnt to think, two advantages that he had never known before…”

“Vanity was the beginning and the end of Sir Walter Eliot's character; vanity of person and of situation.”