Q - Jane Austen
Posted on 21st January 2021
Jane Austen 1775 – 1817 was an English novelist known mainly for her six famous works ‘Pride and Prejudice’, ‘Emma’, ‘Persuasion’, ‘Sense and Sensibility’, ‘Northanger Abbey’ and ‘Mansfield Park’.
‘A lady’s imagination is very rapid; it jumps from admiration to love, from love to matrimony in a moment’
‘Every savage can dance’
‘It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife’
‘For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbours, and laugh at them in our turn’
‘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’
‘To be fond of dancing was a certain step towards falling in love’
‘Good opinion once lost, is lost forever’
‘Think only of the past as its remembrance gives you pleasure’
‘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’
‘None of us want to be in calm waters all our lives’
‘The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel must be intolerably stupid’
‘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’
‘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’
‘If adventures will not befall a young lady in her own village, she must seek them abroad’
‘If I loved you less, I might be able to talk about it more’
‘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’
‘I do not want people to be agreeable as it saves me the trouble of liking them a great deal’
‘It isn’t what we say or think that defines us, but what we do’
‘One half of the world cannot understand the pleasures of the others’
‘We none of us expect to be in smooth water all our days’
‘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’
‘Silly things do cease to be silly if they are done by sensible people in an impudent way’
‘Family connexions are always worth preserving, good company always worth seeking’
‘Everybody likes to go their own way – to choose their own time and manner of devotion’
‘Facts or opinions which are to pass through the hands of so many, to be misconceived by folly in one, and ignorance in another, can hardly have much truth left’
‘Friendship is certainly the finest balm for the pangs of disappointed love’
‘There is no charm equal to tenderness of heart’
‘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 I am 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’
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