I declare after all there is no enjoyment like reading! How much sooner one tires of anything 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" was an English novelist whose works of Romance novel/romantic fiction, set among the landed gentry, earned her a place as one of the most widely read writers in English literature. Her Literary realism/realism, biting irony and social commentary as well as her acclaimed plots have gained her historical importance among scholars and critics.
Austen lived her entire life as part of a close-knit family located on the lower fringes of the English landed gentry. She was educated primarily by her father and older brothers as well as through her own reading. The steadfast support of her family was critical to her development as a professional writer. From her teenage years into her thirties she experimented with various literary forms, including an epistolary novel which she then abandoned, wrote and extensively revised three major novels and began a fourth. From 1811 until 1816, with the release of Sense and Sensibility (1811), Pride and Prejudice (1813), Mansfield Park (1814) and Emma (novel)/Emma (1815), she achieved success as a published writer. She wrote two additional novels, Northanger Abbey and Persuasion (novel)/Persuasion, both published posthumously in 1818, and began a third, which was eventually titled Sanditon, but died before completing it.
If you enjoy these quotes, be sure to check out other famous writers! More Jane Austen on Wikipedia.In all the important preparations of the mind she was complete: being prepared for matrimony by an hatred of home, restraint, and tranquillity; by the misery of disappointed affection, and contempt of the man she was to marry.
A lady's imagination is very rapid; it jumps from admiration to love, from love to matrimony in a moment.
To sit in the shade on a fine day, and look upon verdure is the most perfect refreshment.
I pay very little regard...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 right person.
It sometimes happens that a woman is handsomer at twenty-nine than she was ten years before.
Loss of virtue in a female is irretrievable; that one false step involves her in endless ruin; that her reputation is no less brittle than it is beautiful; and that she cannot be too much guarded in her behaviour towards the undeserving of the other sex.
How little of permanent happiness could belong to a couple who were only brought together because their passions were stronger than their virtue.
But when a young lady is to be a heroine, the perverseness of forty surrounding families cannot prevent her. Something must and will happen to throw a hero in her way.
No one can be really esteemed accomplished who does not greatly surpass what is usually met with.
One half of the world can not understand the pleasures of the other.
It is always incomprehensible to a man that a woman should ever refuse an offer of marriage.
In every power, of which taste is the foundation, excellence is pretty fairly divided between the sexes.
The enthusiasm of a woman's love is even beyond the biographer's.
When any two young people take it into their heads to marry, they are pretty sure by perseverance to carry their point, be they ever so poor, or ever so imprudent, or ever so little likely to be necessary to each other's ultimate comfort.
Everybody likes to go their own way--to choose their own time and manner of devotion.
One cannot be always laughing at a man without now and then stumbling on something witty.
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife. However little known the feelings or views of such a man on his first entering a neighbourhood, this truth is so well fixed in the minds of ths surrounding families, that he is considered as the rightful property of some one or other of their daughters.
A large income is the best recipe for happiness I ever heard of.
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a large fortune must be in want of a wife.
Why not seize the pleasure at once, how often is happiness destroyed by preparation, foolish preparations.
One cannot fix one's eyes on the commonest natural production without finding food for a rambling fancy.
We all know him to be a proud, unpleasant sort of a man; but this would be nothing if you really liked him.
We have all a better guide in ourselves, if we would attend to it, than any other person can be.
Friendship is certainly the finest balm for the pangs of disappointed love.
I do not want people to be agreeable, as it saves me that trouble of liking them.
A person who can write a long letter with ease, cannot write ill.
Where so many hours have been spent in convincing myself that I am right, is there not some reason to fear I may be wrong?
A woman should never be trusted with money.
An artist cannot do anything slovenly.
Wisdom is better than wit, and in the long run will certainly have the laugh on her side.
The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid.
I always deserve the best treatment because I never put up with any other.
Oh! dear; I was so miserable! I am sure I must have been as white as my gown.
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.
What dreadful hot weather we have! It keeps me in a continual state of inelegance.
Let other pens dwell on guilt and misery.
Oh! Do not attack me with your watch. A watch is always too fast or too slow. I cannot be dictated to by a watch.
Where any one body of educated men, of whatever denomination, are condemned indiscriminately, there must be a deficiency of information, or...of something else.
If I loved you less, I might be able to talk about it more.
It will, I believe, be everywhere found, that as the clergy are, or are not what they ought to be, so are the rest of the nation.
'Only a novel'... in short, only some work in which the greatest powers of the mind are displayed, in which the most thorough knowledge of human nature, the happiest delineation of its varieties, the liveliest effusions of wit and humour are conveyed to the world in the best chosen language.
I have no pretensions whatever to that kind of elegance which consists in tormenting a respectable man.
How much I love every thing that is decided and open!
I cannot think well of a man who sports with any woman's feelings; and there may often be a great deal more suffered than a stander-by can judge of.
For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbors and laugh at them in our turn?
At my time of life opinions are tolerably fixed. It is not likely that I should now see or hear anything to change them.
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.
Nothing amuses me more than the easy manner with which everybody settles the abundance of those who have a great deal less than themselves.
She was a woman of mean understanding, little information, and uncertain temper.
Nothing ever fatigues me, but doing what I do not like.
You have delighted us long enough.
You must learn some of my philosophy. Think only of the past as its remembrance gives you pleasure.
To look almost pretty is an acquisition of higher delight to a girl who has been looking plain for the first fifteen years of her life than a beauty from her cradle can ever receive.
We met Dr. Hall in such deep mourning that either his mother, his wife, or himself must be dead.
I am excessively fond of music, but without the smallest skill or right of judging of anybody's performance.
Silly things do cease to be silly if they are done by sensible people in an impudent way.
Human nature is so well disposed towards those who are in interesting situations, that a young person, who either marries or dies, is sure of being kindly spoken of.
Think only of the past as its remembrance gives you pleasure.
Vanity and pride are different things, though the words are often used synonymously.... Pride relates more to our opinion of ourselves, vanity to what we would have others think of us.
Life is just a quick succession of busy nothings.
What wild imaginations one forms where dear self is concerned! How sure to be mistaken!
Copyright © 2024 Electric Goat Media. All Rights Reserved.