Jane Austen

Respect for right conduct is felt by every body.

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.

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

One man's style must not be the rule of another's.

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.

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.

I would have everybody marry if they can do it properly: I do not like to have people throw themselves away; but everybody should marry as soon as they can do it to advantage.

One half of the world cannot understand the pleasures of the other.

The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid.

Nothing ever fatigues me but doing what I do not like.

It is very difficult for the prosperous to be humble.

A person who can write a long letter with ease, cannot write ill.

If things are going untowardly one month, they are sure to mend the next.

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.

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 is safe with a lady engaged; no harm can be done.

No man is offended by another man's admiration of the woman he loves; it is the woman only who can make it a torment.

A single woman with a very narrow income must be a ridiculous, disagreeable old maid - the proper sport of boys and girls; but a single woman of good fortune is always respectable, and may be as sensible and pleasant as anybody else.

The power of doing anything with quickness is always prized much by the possessor, and often without any attention to the imperfection of the performance.

Good-humoured, unaffected girls, will not do for a man who has been used to sensible women. They are two distinct orders of being.

One does not love a place the less for having suffered in it, unless it has been all suffering, nothing but suffering.