Jane Austen

Friendship is certainly the finest balm for the pangs of disappointed love.

We do not look in great cities for our best morality.

To be sure, you are married, and have a very good husband. It is a great happiness, and I am very glad of it. But I do not think I shall ever marry myself. I am not at all in love with any one.

I cannot make speeches, Emma... If I loved you less, I might be able to talk about it more. But you know what I am. You hear nothing but truth from me.

It is very difficult for the prosperous to be humble.

I have not the pleasure of understanding you.

Give a girl an education and introduce her to the world, and there is no telling what she can do.

I declare after all there is no enjoyment like reading! How much sooner one tires of anything than of a book!

Vanity and pride are different things, though the words are often used synonymously.

A lady's imagination is very rapid; it jumps from admiration to love, from love to matrimony in a moment.

I do not want people to be very agreeable, as it saves me the trouble of liking them a great deal.

Single women have a dreadful propensity for being poor—which is one very strong argument in favour of matrimony.

What should I do with your money? If I spend it, you will be angry with me, and if I keep it, you will make me miserable.

There are few people whom I really love, and still fewer of whom I think well. The more I see of the world, the more am I dissatisfied with it.

I am not at all in a humour for writing; I must write on till I am.

The more I know of the world, the more I am convinced that I shall never see a man whom I can really love.

I could not be happy with a man whose taste did not in every point coincide with my own.

No man is offended by truth.

We all know him to be a proud, unpleasant sort of man; but this would be nothing if you really liked him.

Pictures of perfection, as you know, make me sick and wicked.