Jane Ostin — Quotes from Author's Books

— When a woman has five grown-up daughters, she ought to give over thinking of her own beauty.
— In such cases, a woman has not often much beauty to think of.

The distance is nothing when one has a motive.

And never had she so honestly felt that she could have loved him, as now, when all love must be vain.

You appear to me, Mr. Darcy, to allow nothing for the influence of friendship and affection. A regard for the requester would often make one readily yield to a request, without waiting for arguments to reason one into it.

No one can be really esteemed accomplished who does not greatly surpass what is usually met with. A woman must have a thorough knowledge of music, singing, drawing, dancing, and the modern languages, to deserve the word; and besides all this, she must possess a certain something in her air and manner of walking, the tone of her voice, her address and expressions, or the word will be but half-deserved.

It is only by seeing women in their own homes, among their own set, just as they always are, that you can form any just judgment. Short of that, it is all guess and luck—and will generally be ill-luck. How many a man has committed himself on a short acquaintance, and rued it all the rest of his life!

A mind lively and at ease, can do with seeing nothing, and can see nothing that does not answer.

Nothing is more deceitful," said Darcy, "than the appearance of humility. It is often only carelessness of opinion, and sometimes an indirect boast

... and acknowledge the advantages of early hardship and discipline, and the consciousness of being born to struggle and endure.

An engaged woman is always more agreeable than a disengaged. She is satisfied with herself.
Her cares are over, and she feels that she may exert all her powers of pleasing without suspicion.

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 existence or when hope is gone.

Her spirits wanted the solitude and silence which only numbers could give.

She believed she must now submit to feel that another lesson, in the art of knowing our own nothingness beyond our own circle.

there is nothing people are so often deceived in as the state of their own affections.

We none of us expect to be in smooth water all our days.