Jane Austen

Where the mind is not at ease, the body cannot be in health.

Let other pens dwell on guilt and misery. I quit such odious subjects as soon as I can, impatient to restore everybody, not just to innocent happiness, but to the happiness of a most prosperous, exemplary, and spirited love.

The greatest evils in the world will not be found in the most prominent places, but in the most secret corners.

To be sure, you know, one’s mind is always more wounded by a disappointment in love, than in friendship.

It is not every man who has a heart of such tenderness as to be deeply affected by the sight of a dead body.

The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it.

A woman's reputation is no less brittle than it is beautiful.

I am not at all in a humour for writing; I must tell you that, and what still more to the purpose, I am not in a humour for reading either.

Seldom, very seldom, does complete truth belong to any human disclosure; seldom can it happen that something is not a little disguised, or a little mistaken.

Where there is a real superiority of mind, improvement and good taste will be always going on.

It is not what we think or feel that makes us what we are, but what we do.

I am not fond of the word 'love'; it is used so indiscriminately.

If a woman is to speak her mind, she must be very careful to choose her words.

Men have had every advantage of us in telling their own story. Education has been theirs in so much higher a degree; the pen has been in their hands. I will not allow books to prove anything.

A woman is not to marry a man merely because she is asked, or because he is attached to her, and still less for the sake of an establishment.

It is not every man who has a talent for great things.

The very first moment I beheld him, my heart was irrevocably gone.