Jane Austen Quotes - Page 8

Lady Middleton resigned herself... Contenting herself with merely giving her husband a gentle reprimand on the subject, five or six times every day.

A woman is not to marry a man merely because she is asked, or because he is attached to her, and can write a tolerable letter.

A man would always wish to give a woman a better home than the one he takes her from; and he who can do it, where there is no doubt of her regard, must, I think, be the happiest of mortals.

Nobody, who has not been in the interior of a family, can say what the difficulties of any individual of that family may be.

A lady, without a family, was the very best preserver of furniture in the world.

Her family had of late been exceedingly fluctuating. For many years of her life she had had two sons; but the crime and annihilation of Edward a few weeks ago, had robbed her of one; the similar annihilation of Robert had left her for a fortnight without any; and now, by the resurrection of Edward, she had one again.

...And talking of the dear family party which would then be restored, of their mutual pursuits and cheerful society, as the only happiness worth a wish.

Had Elizabeth's opinion been all drawn from her own family, she could not have formed a very pleasing picture of conjugal felicity or domestic comfort.

Elinor placed all that was astonishing in this way of acting to his mother's account; and it was happy for her that he had a mother whose character was so imperfectly known to her, as to be the general excuse for every thing strange on the part of her son.

She looked back as well as she could; but it was all confusion. She had taken up the idea, she supposed and made everything bend to it.

It is singularity which often makes the worst part of our suffering, as it always does of our conduct.

She began to feel that she had not yet gone through all the changes of opinion and sentiment, which the progress of time and variation of circumstances occasion in this world of changes.

Oh! you are a great deal too apt, you know, to like people in general. You never see fault in any body. All the world are good and agreeable in your eyes. I never heard you speak ill of a human being in my life."
"I would wish not to be hasty in censuring any one; but I always speak what I think.

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

Emma has been meaning to read more ever since she was twelve years old. I have seen a great many lists of her drawing-up at various times of books that she meant to read regularly through - and very good lists they were - very well chosen, and very neatly arranged - sometimes alphabetically, and sometimes by some other rule.

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

There certainly was some great mismanagement in the education of those two young men. One has got all the goodness, and the other all the appearance of it.

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

Ever since her being turned into a Churchill, she has out-Churchill'd them all in high and mighty claims.

I do not wish to avoid the walk. The distance is nothing when one has a motive.