Jane Austen Quotes - Page 7

I have been used to consider poetry as the food of love.
Jane Austen
But I hate to hear you talking so like a fine gentleman, and as if women were all fine ladies, instead of rational creatures. We none of us expect to be in smooth water all our days.
Jane Austen
Have you any other objection than your belief of my indifference?"- Elizabeth Bennet
Jane Austen
We must not be so ready to fancy ourselves intentionally injured. We must not expect a lively young man to be always so guarded and circumspect. It is very often nothing but our own vanity that deceives us. Women fancy admiration means more than it does.
Jane Austen
Oh!" cried Anne eagerly, "I hope I do justice to all that is felt by you,and by those who resemble you. God forbid that I should undervaluethe warm and faithful feelings of any of my fellow-creatures! I should deserve utter contempt if I dared to suppose that true attachmentand constancy were known only by woman. No, I believe you capableof everything great and good in your married lives. I believe you equalto every important exertion, and to every domestic forbearance,so long as--if I may be allowed the expression--so long as you havean object. I mean while the woman you love lives, and lives for you. 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 existenceor when hope is gone.
Jane Austen
They had no conversation together, no intercourse but what the commonest civility required. Once so much to each other! Now nothing! There had been a time, when of all the large party now filling the drawing-room at Uppercross, they would have found it most difficult to cease to speak to one another. With the exception, perhaps, of Admiral and Mrs. Croft, who seemed particularly attached and happy, (Anne could allow no other exception even among the married couples) there could have been no two hearts so open, no tastes so simliar, no feelings so in unison, no countenances so beloved. Now they were as strangers; nay, worse than strangers, for they could never become aquainted. It was a perpetual estrangement.
Jane Austen
She understood him. He could not forgive her,-but he could not be unfeeling. Though condemning her for the past, and considering it with high and unjest resentment, though perfectly careless of her, and though becoming attached to another, still he could not see her suffer, without the desire of giving her relief. It was a remainder of former sentiment; it was an impuse of pure, though unacknowledged friendship; it was a proof of his own warm and amiable heart, which she could not contemplate without emotions so compounded of pleasure and pain, that she knew not which prevailed.
Jane Austen
She certainly did not hate him. No; hatred had vanished long ago, and she had almost as long been ashamed of ever feeling a dislike against him, that could be so called. The respect created by the conviction of his valuable qualities, though at first unwillingly admitted, had for some time ceased to be repugnant to her feelings; and it was now heightened into somewhat of a friendlier nature, by the testimony so highly in his favour, and bringing forward his disposition in so amiable a light, which yesterday had produced. 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. Such a change in a man of so much pride, excited not only astonishment but gratitude--for to love, ardent love, it must be attributed; and as such its impression on her was of a sort to be encouraged, as by no means unpleasing, though it could not exactly be defined.
Jane Austen
She had been forced into prudence in her youth, she learned romance as she grew older: the natural sequel of an unnatural beginning.
Jane Austen
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
We all know him to be a proud, unpleasant sort of man; but this would be nothing if you really liked him.
Jane Austen
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
The Very first moment I beheld him, my heart was irrevocably gone.
Jane Austen
Yet some happiness must and would arise, from the very conviction, that he did suffer.
Jane Austen
She had received ideas which disposed her to be courteous and kind to all, and to pity every one, as being less happy than herself.
Jane Austen
…for I look upon the Frasers to be about as unhappy as most other married people.
Jane Austen
But to appear happy when I am so miserable — Oh! who can require it?
Jane Austen
I will not talk of my own happiness,' said he, 'great as it is, for I think only of yours. Compared with you, who has the right to be happy?
Jane Austen
I was uncomfortable enough. I was very uncomfortable, I may say unhappy.
Jane Austen
Happiness must preclude false indulgence and physic.
Jane Austen
But there was happiness elsewhere which no description can reach.
Jane Austen
…she had nothing to do but to forgive herself and be happier than ever…
Jane Austen
How often is happiness destroyed by preparation, foolish preparation!
Jane Austen
He will make you happy, Fanny; I know he will make you happy; but you will make him everything.
Jane Austen
She was happy, she knew she was happy, and knew she ought to be happy.
Jane Austen
[I]t is well to have as many holds upon happiness as possible.
Jane Austen
Why not seize the pleasure at once? -- How often is happiness destroyed by preparation, foolish preparation!
Jane Austen
A large income is the best recipe for happiness I ever heard of.
Jane Austen
You must be the best judge of your own happiness.
Jane Austen
I must learn to be content with being happier than I deserve.
Jane Austen
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.
Jane Austen
Till I have your disposition, your goodness, I never can have your happiness.”~ Jane Austen (Pride & Prejudice)
Jane Austen
Biti dobro upućen u stvari znači lišiti druge mogućnosti da udovolje svojoj taštini, što će pametan čovek uvek nastojati da izbegne.
Jane Austen
…one half of her should not be always so much wiser than the other half…
Jane Austen
Angry people are not always wise.
Jane Austen
Words were insufficient for the elevation of his [Mr Collins'] feelings; and he was obliged to walk about the room, while Elizabeth tried to unite civility and truth in a few short sentences.
Jane Austen
It does not come to me in quite so direct a line as that; it takes a bend or two, but nothing of consequence. The stream is as good as at first; the little rubbish it collects in the turnings is easily moved away.
Jane Austen
But to live in ignorance on such a point was impossible.
Jane Austen
My Emma, does not every thing serve to prove more and more the beauty of truth and sincerity in all our dealings with each other?
Jane Austen
It has sunk him, I cannot say how much it has sunk him in my opinion. So unlike what a man should be!-None of that upright integrity, that strict adherence to truth and principle, that distain of trick and littleness, which a man should display in every transaction of his life.
Jane Austen
Every impulse of feeling should be guided by reason; and, in my opinion, exertion should always be in proportion to what is required.
Jane Austen
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.
Jane Austen
There is one thing, Emma, which a man can always do if he chooses, and that is his duty; not by manoeuvring and finessing, but by vigour and resolution. - Mr. Knightley
Jane Austen
my good qualities are under your protection, and you are to exaggerate them as much as possible; and, in return, it belongs to me to find occasion for teasing and quarreling with you as often as may be...
Jane Austen
And pictures of perfection, as you know, make me sick and wicked.
Jane Austen
Yes, vanity is a weakness indeed. But pride - where there is a real superiority of mind, pride will be always under good regulation.
Jane Austen
It is happy for you that you possess the talent of flattering with delicacy. May I ask whether these pleasing attentions proceed from the impulse of the moment, or are they the result of previous study?
Jane Austen
I cannot speak well enough to be unintelligible.
Jane Austen
Stupid men are the only ones worth knowing after all.
Jane Austen
Life seems but a quick succession of busy nothings.
Jane Austen
I do not want people to be very agreeable, as it saves me the trouble of liking them a great deal.
Jane Austen
The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid.
Jane Austen
And to all this she must yet add something more substantial, in the improvement of her mind by extensive reading.
Jane Austen
Happiness in marriage is entirely a matter of chance. If the dispositions of the parties are ever so well known to each other or ever so similar beforehand, it does not advance their felicity in the least. They always continue to grow sufficiently unlike afterwards to have their share of vexation; and it is better to know as little as possible of the defects of the person with whom you are to pass your life.
Jane Austen
Do not give way to useless alarm; though it is right to be prepared for the worst, there is no occasion to look on it as certain.
Jane Austen
Without music, life would be a blank to me.
Jane Austen
...when pain is over, the remembrance of it often becomes a pleasure.
Jane Austen
How quick come the reasons for approving what we like.
Jane Austen
One half of the world cannot understand the pleasures of the other.
Jane Austen
Is not general incivility the very essence of love?
Jane Austen