Jane Austen Quotes - Page 7

To look almost pretty is an acquisition of higher delight to a girl who has been looking plain the first fifteen years of her life than a beauty from her cradle can ever receive.

…for what after all is Youth and Beauty?

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

You must really begin to harden yourself to the idea of being worth looking at.

To sit in the shade on a fine day, and look upon verdure is the most perfect refreshment.

When I look out on such a night as this, I feel as if there could be neither wickedness nor sorrow in the world; and there certainly would be less of both if the sublimity of Nature were more attended to, and people were carried more out of themselves by contemplating such a scene.

You will think me rhapsodizing; but when I am out of doors, especially when I am sitting out of doors, I am very apt to get into this sort of wondering strain. One cannot fix one's eyes on the commonest natural production without finding food for a rambling fancy.

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

But Catherine did not know her own advantages - did not know that a good-looking girl, with an affectionate heart and a very ignorant mind, cannot fail of attracting a clever young man, unless circumstances are particularly untoward.

We are all fools in love

An unhappy alternative is before you, Elizabeth. From this day you must be a stranger to one of your parents. Your mother will never see you again if you do not marry Mr. Collins, and I will never see you again if you do.

Without thinking highly either of men or of matrimony, marriage had always been her object; it was the only honourable provision for well-educated young women of small fortune, and however uncertain of giving happiness, must be their pleasantest preservative from want.

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 right person.

Miss Bingley's congratulations to her brother, on his approaching marriage, were all that was affectionate and insincere.

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.

...and their marriage, instead of depriving her of one friend, secured her two.

Poverty is a great evil, but to a woman of education and feeling it ought not, it cannot be the greatest. - I would rather be a teacher at a school (and I can think of nothing worse) than marry a man I did not like.

I have none of the usual inducements of women to marry. Were I to fall in love, indeed, it would be a different thing! but I have never been in love; it is not my way, or my nature; and I do not think I ever shall.

Time, you may be sure, will make one or the other of us think differently; and, in the meanwhile, we need not talk much on the subject.