Jane Austen wrote six novels. She changed literature forever. Her words still live in our hearts, our texts, and our wedding speeches.
Best Jane Austen Quotes of All Time
- “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.” — Pride and Prejudice
- “I declare after all there is no enjoyment like reading!” — Pride and Prejudice
- “You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope.” — Persuasion
- “My good opinion once lost is lost forever.” — Pride and Prejudice
- “There is no charm equal to tenderness of heart.” — Letters
- “Wisdom is better than wit, and in the long run will certainly have the laugh on her side.” — Letters
- “Think only of the past as its remembrance gives you pleasure.” — Pride and Prejudice
- “I wish, as well as everybody else, to be perfectly happy; but, like everybody else, it must be in my own way.” — Sense and Sensibility
- “Which of all my important nothings shall I tell you first?” — Letters
- “Indulge your imagination in every possible flight.” — Pride and Prejudice
- “Pictures of perfection, as you know, make me sick and wicked.” — Letters
- “An artist cannot do anything slovenly.” — Letters
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Famous Jane Austen Quotes on Love
- “In vain I have struggled. It will not do. My feelings will not be repressed. You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you.” — Pride and Prejudice
- “If I loved you less, I might be able to talk about it more.” — Emma
- “I have loved none but you.” — Persuasion
- “To be fond of dancing was a certain step towards falling in love.” — Pride and Prejudice
- “She was convinced that she could have been happy with him, when it was no longer likely they should meet.” — Pride and Prejudice
- “Do anything rather than marry without affection.” — Pride and Prejudice
- “There are as many forms of love as there are moments in time.” — Mansfield Park
- “Is not general incivility the very essence of love?” — Pride and Prejudice
- “The distance is nothing when one has motive.” — Pride and Prejudice
- “A lady’s imagination is very rapid; it jumps from admiration to love, from love to matrimony in a moment.” — Pride and Prejudice
- “Their eyes instantly met, and the cheeks of both were overspread with the deepest blush.” — Pride and Prejudice
- “Till this moment I never knew myself.” — Pride and Prejudice
- “There is no enjoyment like reading! How much sooner one tires of any thing than of a book!” — Pride and Prejudice
- “One cannot be always laughing at a man without now and then stumbling on something witty.” — Pride and Prejudice
- “How quick come the reasons for approving what we like.” — Persuasion
Jane Austen Quotes from Persuasion — The Most Romantic Novel Ever Written
- “You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope. Tell me not that I am too late.” — Persuasion
- “I have loved none but you. Unjust I may have been, weak and resentful I have been, but never inconstant.” — Persuasion
- “All the privilege I claim for my own sex is that of loving longest, when existence or when hope is gone.” — Persuasion
- “Dare not say that man forgets sooner than woman, that his love has an earlier death.” — Persuasion
- “If there is anything disagreeable going on, men are always sure to get out of it.” — Persuasion
- “His cold politeness, his ceremonious grace, were worse than anything.” — Persuasion
- “How quick come the reasons for approving what we like.” — Persuasion
- “I hate to hear you talk about all women as if they were fine ladies instead of rational creatures. None of us want to be in calm waters all our lives.” — Persuasion
- “A lady without a family was the very best preserver of furniture in the world.” — Persuasion
- “One man’s style must not be the rule of another’s.” — Emma
- “My idea of good company is the company of clever, well-informed people who have a great deal of conversation.” — Persuasion
Funny Jane Austen Quotes That Prove She Was the Queen of Wit
- “For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbours, and laugh at them in our turn?” — Mr. Bennet, Pride and Prejudice
- “I do not want people to be very agreeable, as it saves me the trouble of liking them a great deal.” — Letters
- “Stupid men are the only ones worth knowing, after all.” — Pride and Prejudice
- “We are to have a tiny party here tonight. I hate tiny parties, they force one into constant exertion.” — Letters
- “Vanity working on a weak head produces every sort of mischief.” — Emma
- “I cannot speak well enough to be unintelligible.” — Northanger Abbey
- “From politics it was an easy step to silence.” — Northanger Abbey
- “Now I must give one smirk, and then we may be rational again.” — Northanger Abbey
- “What dreadful hot weather we have! It keeps one in a continual state of inelegance.” — Letters
- “I will not say your mulberry trees are dead, but I am afraid they are not alive.” — Letters
- “It is my unhappy fate seldom to treat people as well as they deserve.” — Letters
- “A person who can write a long letter with ease cannot write ill.” — Pride and Prejudice
- “Laugh as much as you choose, but you will not laugh me out of my opinion.” — Pride and Prejudice
- “One cannot be always laughing at a man without now and then stumbling on something witty.” — Pride and Prejudice
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Top Jane Austen Quotes on Life and Happiness
- “Know your own happiness. Want for nothing but patience — or give it a more fascinating name: call it hope.” — Sense and Sensibility
- “I always deserve the best treatment because I never put up with any other.” — Emma
- “It is well to have as many holds on happiness as possible.” — Emma
- “Perfect happiness, even in memory, is not common.” — Emma
- “How often is happiness destroyed by preparation, foolish preparation.” — Emma
- “If things are going untowardly one month, they are sure to mend the next.” — Emma
- “There is nothing like staying home for real comfort.” — Emma
- “Every moment has its pleasures and its hope.” — Mansfield Park
- “Life seems but a quick succession of busy nothings.” — Mansfield Park
- “Success supposes endeavour.” — Emma
- “What is right cannot be done too soon.” — Emma
- “Money can only give happiness where there is nothing else to give.” — Sense and Sensibility
- “I would much rather have been merry than wise.” — Emma
- “It was a delightful visit — perfect, in being much too short.” — Emma
- “How much I love everything that is decided and open.” — Emma
Jane Austen Quotes on Self-Worth and Confidence
- “There is a stubbornness about me that never can bear to be frightened at the will of others. My courage always rises at every attempt to intimidate me.” — Elizabeth Bennet, Pride and Prejudice
- “I hate to hear you talk about all women as if they were fine ladies instead of rational creatures.” — Persuasion
- “We have all a better guide in ourselves, if we would attend to it, than any other person can be.” — Mansfield Park
- “Woman is fine for her own satisfaction alone.” — Northanger Abbey
- “A woman, especially if she have the misfortune of knowing anything, should conceal it as well as she can.” — Northanger Abbey
- “I cannot fix on the hour, or the spot, or the look, or the words which laid the foundation. It is too long ago. I was in the middle before I knew that I had begun.” — Mr. Darcy, Pride and Prejudice
- “Nothing ever fatigues me but doing what I do not like.” — Mansfield Park
- “Run mad as often as you choose, but do not faint.” — Love and Freindship
- “Let your conduct be your only harangue.” — Mansfield Park
- “I must learn to be content with being happier than I deserve.” — Pride and Prejudice
Timeless Jane Austen Quotes About Books and Reading
- “The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid.” — Northanger Abbey
- “For my own part, if a book is well written, I always find it too short.” — Northanger Abbey
- “I declare after all there is no enjoyment like reading!” — Pride and Prejudice
- “How much sooner one tires of any thing than of a book!” — Pride and Prejudice
- “I have read so many books and they are all the same.” — Letters
- “Without music, life would be a blank to me.” — Emma
- “Give him a book, and he will read all day long.” — Persuasion
- “I shall be miserable if I have not an excellent library.” — Pride and Prejudice
- “Her own thoughts and reflections were habitually her best companions.” — Mansfield Park
- “An artist cannot do anything slovenly.” — Letters
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Jane Austen Quotes on Marriage, Money, and Society
- “Happiness in marriage is entirely a matter of chance.” — Pride and Prejudice
- “It is always incomprehensible to a man that a woman should ever refuse an offer of marriage.” — Emma
- “In nine cases out of ten, a woman had better show more affection than she feels.” — Pride and Prejudice
- “A large income is the best recipe for happiness I ever heard of.” — Mansfield Park
- “People always live forever when there is an annuity to be paid.” — Sense and Sensibility
- “Selfishness must always be forgiven, you know, because there is no hope of a cure.” — Mansfield Park
- “Nobody minds having what is too good for them.” — Mansfield Park
- “Varnish and gilding hide many stains.” — Mansfield Park
- “It is very difficult for the prosperous to be humble.” — Emma
- “There are people who the more you do for them, the less they will do for themselves.” — Emma
- “Angry people are not always wise.” — Pride and Prejudice
- “Men of sense, no matter what you say, do not want silly wives.” — Emma
- “Those who never complain are never pitied.” — Pride and Prejudice
- “One half of the world cannot understand the pleasures of the other.” — Emma
- “Vanity and pride are different things, though the words are often used synonymously.” — Pride and Prejudice
Jane Austen Quotes on Friendship and Human Nature
- “There is nothing I would not do for those who are really my friends. I have no notion of loving people by halves; it is not my nature.” — Northanger Abbey
- “Friendship is certainly the finest balm for the pangs of disappointed love.” — Northanger Abbey
- “One man’s way may be as good as another’s, but we all like our own best.” — Northanger Abbey
- “It is not time or opportunity that is to determine intimacy; it is disposition alone.” — Sense and Sensibility
- “But people themselves alter so much, that there is something new to be observed in them forever.” — Pride and Prejudice
- “If an adventure does not befall a young lady in her own village, she must seek them abroad.” — Northanger Abbey
- “There is safety in reserve, but no attraction. One cannot love a reserved person.” — Emma
- “We all have our best guides within us, if only we would listen.” — Mansfield Park
- “I could easily forgive his pride, if he had not mortified mine.” — Pride and Prejudice
- “What are men to rocks and mountains?” — Pride and Prejudice
- “One can never have too large a party.” — Emma
- “I am happier even than Jane; she only smiles, I laugh.” — Elizabeth Bennet, Pride and Prejudice
Jane Austen Quotes from Her Private Letters — The Real, Unfiltered Jane
- “Which of all my important nothings shall I tell you first?” — Letters to Cassandra
- “I do not want people to be very agreeable, as it saves me the trouble of liking them a great deal.” — Letters
- “Pictures of perfection, as you know, make me sick and wicked.” — Letters
- “Let me know when you begin the new tea, and the new white wine. My present elegances have not yet made me indifferent to such matters.” — Letters
- “I am still a cat if I see a mouse.” — Letters
- “What dreadful hot weather we have! It keeps one in a continual state of inelegance.” — Letters
- “There is no charm equal to tenderness of heart.” — Letters
- “Wisdom is better than wit, and in the long run will certainly have the laugh on her side.” — Letters
- “An artist cannot do anything slovenly.” — Letters
- “It is my unhappy fate seldom to treat people as well as they deserve.” — Letters
- “I will not say your mulberry trees are dead, but I am afraid they are not alive.” — Letters
- “Selfishness must always be forgiven because there is no hope for a cure.” — Letters
- “There are as many forms of love as there are moments in time.” — Letters
- “I have so many good things to say to you, I hardly know where to begin.” — Letters
- “I think I may boast myself to be, with all possible vanity, the most unlearned and uninformed female who ever dared to be an authoress.” — Letters
- “I could not sit seriously down to write a serious romance under any other motive than to save my life.” — Letters
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Final Thoughts
Jane Austen gave the world something rare — honesty dressed in wit, truth wrapped in beauty. Her words are not old. They are permanent. Keep reading her. Keep quoting her. She will never let you down.
FAQ’s
What is Jane Austen’s most famous quote?
Jane Austen’s most famous quote is the opening line of Pride and Prejudice — “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.”
What did Jane Austen say about love?
She believed true love is built on mutual respect, honest feeling, and genuine understanding — not social rank or money.
What are some short Jane Austen quotes that are easy to remember?
“Angry people are not always wise,” “Nothing ever fatigues me but doing what I do not like,” and “My good opinion once lost is lost forever” are among the best short Jane Austen quotes.
Which Jane Austen novel has the best quotes?
Pride and Prejudice is the most quotable, Persuasion the most emotionally powerful, and Emma the most delightfully witty.
Did Jane Austen write any quotes about women and independence?
Yes — Jane Austen quotes about women run throughout all six novels, championing a woman’s right to think, choose, and refuse what does not serve her.
Are there any Jane Austen quotes that are often misattributed to her?
Yes — several popular misattributed Jane Austen quotes actually came from film screenwriters adapting her novels, particularly the 1996 and 2008 adaptations.
What makes Jane Austen’s writing style so quotable?
Her precision, irony, and ability to pack an entire human truth into a single perfectly balanced sentence make her the most quotable writer in the English language.
I’m Ava Moreno, founder of TheEndQuotes.com. I love sharing quotes that inspire, encourage, and connect us through the power of meaningful words.
