203 Jane Austen Quotes: Love, Wit & Wisdom

This collection brings together 203 of Jane Austen’s most memorable lines — on love, marriage, society, character, and the timeless truths of human nature. Each quote is presented verbatim from her six major novels.

Love & Marriage Jane Austen Quotes

1. “You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope.” — Jane Austen, Persuasion
2. “Oh! do not attack me with your watch. A watch is always too fast or too slow. I cannot be dictated to by a watch.” — Jane Austen, Mansfield Park
3. “A clergyman has nothing to do but be slovenly and selfish—read the newspaper, watch the weather, and quarrel with his wife. His curate does all the work, and the business of his own life is to dine.” — Jane Austen, Mansfield Park
4. “What! take orders without a living! No; that is madness indeed; absolute madness.” — Jane Austen, Mansfield Park
5. “Selfishness must always be forgiven, you know, because there is no hope of a cure.” — Jane Austen, Mansfield Park
6. “There is, I believe, in every disposition a tendency to some particular evil, a natural defect, which not even the best education can overcome.” — Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
7. “Till this moment, I never knew myself.” — Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
8. “By you, I was properly humbled.” — Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
9. “We none of us expect to be in smooth water all our days.” — Jane Austen, Persuasion
10. “There will be little rubs and disappointments everywhere, and we are all apt to expect too much; but then, if one scheme of happiness fails, human nature turns to another; if the first calculation is wrong, we make a second better: we find comfort somewhere.” — Jane Austen, Mansfield Park
11. “A woman especially, if she have the misfortune of knowing anything, should conceal it as well as she can.” — Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey
12. “Vanity and pride are different things, though the words are often used synonymously. A person may be proud without being vain. Pride relates more to our opinion of ourselves; vanity to what we would have others think of us.” — Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
13. “Had I been in love, I could not have been more wretchedly blind. But vanity, not love, has been my folly.” — Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
14. “If a woman conceals her affection with the same skill from the object of it, she may lose the opportunity of fixing him; and it will then be but poor consolation to believe the world equally in the dark.” — Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
15. “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.” — Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey

Wit & Humor Jane Austen Quotes

1. “It has been coming on so gradually, that I hardly know when it began; but I believe I must date it from my first seeing his beautiful grounds at Pemberley.” — Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
2. “Perhaps I did not always love him so well as I do now; but in such cases as these a good memory is unpardonable.” — Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
3. “I am not one of those young ladies (if such young ladies there are) who are so daring as to risk their happiness on the chance of being asked a second time.” — Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
4. “It is settled between us already that we are to be the happiest couple in the world.” — Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
5. “Accept my thanks for the compliment you are paying me. I am very sensible of the honour of your proposals, but it is impossible for me to do otherwise than decline them.” — Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
6. “I am not now to learn, that it is usual with young ladies to reject the addresses of the man whom they secretly mean to accept, when he first applies for their favour.” — Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
7. “You must give me leave to flatter myself, my dear cousin, that your refusal of my addresses are merely words of course.” — Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
8. “I do assure you, sir, that I have no pretensions whatever to that kind of elegance which consists in tormenting a respectable man.” — Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
9. “Do not consider me now as an elegant female intending to plague you, but as a rational creature speaking the truth from her heart.” — Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
10. “I could not have parted with you, my Lizzy, to anyone less worthy.” — Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
11. “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.” — Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
12. “Follies and nonsense, whims and inconsistencies, do divert me, I own, and I laugh at them whenever I can.” — Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
13. “I have not known him long indeed, but I am much better acquainted with him, than I am with any other creature in the world, except yourself and mama.” — Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility
14. “Elinor agreed to it all, for she did not think he deserved the compliment of rational opposition.” — Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility
15. “Friendship is certainly the finest balm for the pangs of disappointed love.” — Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey

Wisdom Jane Austen Quotes

1. “Remember that whatever your conjectures may be, you have no right to repeat them.” — Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility
2. “It is very difficult for the prosperous to be humble.” — Jane Austen, Emma
3. “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.” — Jane Austen, Emma
4. “I have none of the usual inducements of women to marry. Were I to fall in love, indeed, it would be a different thing! but I never have been in love; it is not my way, or my nature; and I do not think I ever shall.” — Jane Austen, Emma
5. “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 any body else.” — Jane Austen, Emma
6. “Emma Woodhouse, handsome, clever, and rich, with a comfortable home and happy disposition, seemed to unite some of the best blessings of existence; and had lived nearly twenty-one years in the world with very little to distress or vex her.” — Jane Austen, Emma
7. “One half of the world cannot understand the pleasures of the other.” — Jane Austen, Emma
8. “It is always incomprehensible to a man that a woman should ever refuse an offer of marriage. A man always imagines a woman to be ready for any body who asks her.” — Jane Austen, Emma
9. “You must be the best judge of your own happiness.” — Jane Austen, Emma
10. “Without music, life would be a blank to me.” — Jane Austen, Emma
11. “Success supposes endeavour.” — Jane Austen, Emma
12. “What is right to be done cannot be done too soon.” — Jane Austen, Emma
13. “A mind lively and at ease, can do with seeing nothing, and can see nothing that does not answer.” — Jane Austen, Emma
14. “One cannot have too large a party.” — Jane Austen, Emma
15. “The advantages of natural folly in a beautiful girl have been already set forth by the capital pen of a sister author.” — Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey

Pride & Prejudice Jane Austen Quotes

1. “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.” — Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
2. “Happiness in marriage is entirely a matter of chance.” — Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
3. “A lady's imagination is very rapid; it jumps from admiration to love, from love to matrimony, in a moment.” — Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
4. “In nine cases out of ten, a woman had better show more affection than she feels.” — Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
5. “Could there be finer symptoms? Is not general incivility the very essence of love?” — Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
6. “You showed me how insufficient were all my pretensions to please a woman worthy of being pleased.” — Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
7. “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.” — Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
8. “I have two small favours to request. First, that you will allow me the free use of my understanding on the present occasion; and, secondly, of my room.” — Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
9. “My reasons for marrying are, first, that I think it a right thing for every clergyman in easy circumstances (like myself) to set the example of matrimony in his parish.” — Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
10. ““And yours,” he replied, with a smile, “is wilfully to misunderstand them.”” — Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
11. “You are uniformly charming!” — Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
12. “Your mother will never see you again if you do not marry Mr. Collins, and I will never see you again if you do.” — Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
13. “I have a high respect for your nerves. They are my old friends. I have heard you mention them with consideration these twenty years at least.” — Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
14. “I dearly love a laugh.” — Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
15. “But, if I were you, I would stand by the nephew. He has more to give.” — Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
16. “Charming as were all Mrs. Radcliffe's works, and charming even as were the works of all her imitators, it was not in them perhaps that human nature, at least in the Midland counties of England, was to be looked for.” — Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey

Sense & Sensibility Jane Austen Quotes

1. “Know your own happiness. You want nothing but patience—or give it a more fascinating name, call it hope.” — Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility
2. “Money can only give happiness where there is nothing else to give it.” — Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility
3. “My doctrine has never aimed at the subjection of the understanding. All I have ever attempted to influence has been the behaviour.” — Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility
4. “I wish as well as every body else to be perfectly happy; but, like every body else it must be in my own way.” — Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility
5. “To wish was to hope, and to hope was to expect.” — Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility
6. “If I could but know his heart, everything would become easy.” — Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility
7. “The more I know of the world, the more am I convinced that I shall never see a man whom I can really love.” — Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility
8. “I could not be happy with a man whose taste did not in every point coincide with my own. He must enter into all my feelings; the same books, the same music must charm us both.” — Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility
9. ““It is not every one,” said Elinor, “who has your passion for dead leaves.”” — Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility
10. “I never wish to offend, but I am so foolishly shy, that I often seem negligent, when I am only kept back by my natural awkwardness.” — Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility
11. ““I do not attempt to deny,” said she, “that I think very highly of him—that I greatly esteem, that I like him.”” — Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility
12. “Undoubtedly. At my time of life opinions are tolerably fixed. It is not likely that I should now see or hear any thing to change them.” — Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility
13. “Sometimes one is guided by what they say of themselves, and very frequently by what other people say of them, without giving oneself time to deliberate and judge.” — Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility
14. “I cannot express my own abhorrence of myself. Whenever I looked towards the past, I saw some duty neglected, or some failing indulged.” — Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility
15. ““I am afraid,” replied Elinor, “that the pleasantness of an employment does not always evince its propriety.”” — Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility

Emma Jane Austen Quotes

1. “If I loved you less, I might be able to talk about it more.” — Jane Austen, Emma
2. “A woman is not to marry a man merely because she is asked, or because he is attached to her, and can write a tolerable letter.” — Jane Austen, Emma
3. “My being charming, Harriet, is not quite enough to induce me to marry; I must find other people charming—one other person at least.” — Jane Austen, Emma
4. “Human nature is so well disposed towards those who are in interesting situations, that a young person, who either marries or dies, is sure of being kindly spoken of.” — Jane Austen, Emma
5. “I do not know whether it ought to be so, but certainly silly things do cease to be silly if they are done by sensible people in an impudent way.” — Jane Austen, Emma
6. “It is very unfair to judge of any body's conduct, without an intimate knowledge of their situation.” — Jane Austen, Emma
7. “Nobody, who has not been in the interior of a family, can say what the difficulties of any individual of that family may be.” — Jane Austen, Emma
8. “There are people, who the more you do for them, the less they will do for themselves.” — Jane Austen, Emma
9. “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.” — Jane Austen, Emma
10. “Men of sense, whatever you may chuse to say, do not want silly wives.” — Jane Austen, Emma
11. “Better be without sense, than misapply it as you do.” — Jane Austen, Emma
12. “Vanity working on a weak head, produces every sort of mischief.” — Jane Austen, Emma
13. “There is safety in reserve, but no attraction. One cannot love a reserved person.” — Jane Austen, Emma
14. “The real evils, indeed, of Emma's situation were the power of having rather too much her own way, and a disposition to think a little too well of herself.” — Jane Austen, Emma
15. “They had been living together as friend and friend very mutually attached, and Emma doing just what she liked; highly esteeming Miss Taylor's judgment, but directed chiefly by her own.” — Jane Austen, Emma

Short Lines Jane Austen Quotes

1. “Ah! there is nothing like staying at home for real comfort.” — Jane Austen, Emma
2. “A large income is the best recipe for happiness I ever heard of.” — Jane Austen, Mansfield Park
3. “Nobody minds having what is too good for them.” — Jane Austen, Mansfield Park
4. “We do not look in great cities for our best morality.” — Jane Austen, Mansfield Park
5. “To sit in the shade on a fine day, and look upon verdure, is the most perfect refreshment.” — Jane Austen, Mansfield Park
6. “My feelings are not quite so evanescent, nor my memory of the past under such easy dominion as one finds to be the case with men of the world.” — Jane Austen, Mansfield Park
7. “The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid.” — Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey
8. “Everybody allows that the talent of writing agreeable letters is peculiarly female.” — Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey
9. “One man's ways may be as good as another's, but we all like our own best.” — Jane Austen, Persuasion
10. “I could easily forgive his pride, if he had not mortified mine.” — Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
11. “There is a stubbornness about me that never can bear to be frightened at the will of others.” — Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
12. “Till this moment I never knew myself.” — Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
13. “I had not known you a month before I felt that you were the last man in the world whom I could ever be prevailed on to marry.” — Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
14. “If any young men come for Mary or Kitty, send them in, for I am quite at leisure.” — Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

Famous Verses Jane Austen Quotes

1. “He is a gentleman; I am a gentleman's daughter; so far we are equal.” — Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
2. “My feelings are not puffed about with every attempt to move them.” — Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
3. “It is particularly incumbent on those who never change their opinion, to be secure of judging properly at first.” — Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
4. “A girl likes to be crossed a little in love now and then.” — Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
5. “Angry people are not always wise.” — Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
6. “Oh! You are a great deal too apt, you know, to like people in general.” — Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
7. “It is happy for you that you possess the talent of flattering with delicacy.” — Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
8. “There is not a woman in this room whom it would not be a punishment to me to stand up with.” — Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
9. “I declare after all there is no enjoyment like reading! How much sooner one tires of any thing than of a book!” — Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
10. “I always deserve the best treatment because I never put up with any other.” — Jane Austen, Emma
11. “Silly things do cease to be silly if they are done by sensible people in an impudent way.” — Jane Austen, Emma
12. “It is not who did it first but who did it best.” — Jane Austen, Emma
13. “Better be without sense than misapply it as you do.” — Jane Austen, Emma
14. “It is very unfair to judge of anybody's conduct, without an intimate knowledge of their situation.” — Jane Austen, Emma

On Society Jane Austen Quotes

1. “I always take the part of my own sex.” — Jane Austen, Emma
2. “Wickedness is always wickedness, but folly is not always folly.” — Jane Austen, Emma
3. “It is such a happiness when good people get together—and they always do.” — Jane Austen, Emma
4. “One cannot be always laughing at a man without now and then stumbling on something witty.” — Jane Austen, Emma
5. “Till now that she was threatened with its loss, Emma had never known how much of her happiness depended on being first with Mr. Knightley, first in interest and affection.” — Jane Austen, Emma
6. “It may be possible to do without dancing entirely. Instances have been known of young people passing many, many months successively, without being at any ball of any description, and no material injury accrue either to body or mind.” — Jane Austen, Emma
7. “I wish, as well as everybody else, to be perfectly happy; but, like everybody else, it must be in my own way.” — Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility
8. “"It is not every one," said Elinor, "who has your passion for dead leaves."” — Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility
9. “"A woman of seven and twenty," said Marianne, after pausing a moment, "can never hope to feel or inspire affection again."” — Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility
10. “"Is there a felicity in the world," said Marianne, "superior to this?"” — Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility
11. “Self-destruction is the effect of cowardice in the highest extreme.” — Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility
12. “My idea of good company is the company of clever, well-informed people, who have a great deal of conversation.” — Jane Austen, Persuasion
13. “There could have been no two hearts so open, no tastes so similar, no feelings so in unison.” — Jane Austen, Persuasion
14. “I am half agony, half hope. Tell me not that I am too late.” — Jane Austen, Persuasion

On Character Jane Austen Quotes

1. “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.” — Jane Austen, Persuasion
2. “I can listen no longer in silence. I must speak to you by such means as are within my reach.” — Jane Austen, Persuasion
3. “Dare not say that man forgets sooner than woman, that his love has an earlier death.” — Jane Austen, Persuasion
4. “We do not forget you, so soon as you forget us.” — Jane Austen, Persuasion
5. “How quick come the reasons for approving what we like.” — Jane Austen, Persuasion
6. “Time will explain.” — Jane Austen, Persuasion
7. “She had been forced into prudence in her youth, she learned romance as she grew older: the natural sequel of an unnatural beginning.” — Jane Austen, Persuasion
8. “Men have had every advantage of us in telling their own story.” — Jane Austen, Persuasion
9. “I do not think I ever opened a book in my life which had not something to say upon woman's inconstancy.” — Jane Austen, Persuasion
10. “She gloried in being a sailor's wife, but she must pay the tax of quick alarm for belonging to that profession.” — Jane Austen, Persuasion
11. “Anne hoped she had outlived the age of blushing.” — Jane Austen, Persuasion
12. “We have all a better guide in ourselves, if we would attend to it, than any other person can be.” — Jane Austen, Mansfield Park
13. “One cannot fix one's eyes on the commonest natural production without finding food for a rambling fancy.” — Jane Austen, Mansfield Park
14. “If any one faculty of our nature may be called more wonderful than the rest, I do think it is memory.” — Jane Austen, Mansfield Park

On Happiness Jane Austen Quotes

1. “Her own thoughts and reflections were habitually her best companions.” — Jane Austen, Mansfield Park
2. “Life seems but a quick succession of busy nothings.” — Jane Austen, Mansfield Park
3. “Let other pens dwell on guilt and misery.” — Jane Austen, Mansfield Park
4. “We do not look in our great cities for our best morality.” — Jane Austen, Mansfield Park
5. “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.” — Jane Austen, Mansfield Park
6. “We have all to be judged according to our works, miss Crawford.” — Jane Austen, Mansfield Park
7. “An engaged woman is always more agreeable than a disengaged.” — Jane Austen, Mansfield Park
8. “Every moment has its pleasures and its hope.” — Jane Austen, Mansfield Park
9. “I purposely abstain from dates on this occasion, that every one may be at liberty to fix their own.” — Jane Austen, Mansfield Park
10. “No one who had ever seen Catherine Morland in her infancy would have supposed her born to be an heroine.” — Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey
11. “If I could not be persuaded into doing what I thought wrong, I will never be tricked into it.” — Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey
12. “She was heartily ashamed of her ignorance. A misplaced shame.” — Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey
13. “Now I must give one smirk, and then we may be rational again.” — Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey
14. “To look almost pretty is an acquisition of higher delight to a girl who has been looking plain the first fifteen years of her life than a beauty from her cradle can ever receive.” — Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey

On Folly Jane Austen Quotes

1. “It would be mortifying to the feelings of many ladies, could they be made to understand how little the heart of man is affected by what is costly or new in their attire.” — Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey
2. “Where the heart is really attached, I know very well how little one can be pleased with the attention of any body else.” — Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey
3. “A woman, especially, if she have the misfortune of knowing anything, should conceal it as well as she can.” — Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey
4. “If the heroine of one novel be not patronized by the heroine of another, from whom can she expect protection and regard?” — Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey
5. “Oh! It is only a novel! … or, in short, only some work in which the greatest powers of the mind are displayed, in which the most thorough knowledge of human nature, the happiest delineation of its varieties, the liveliest effusions of wit and humour, are conveyed to the world in the best-chosen language.” — Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey
6. “I cannot speak well enough to be unintelligible.” — Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey
7. “If adventures will not befall a young lady in her own village, she must seek them abroad.” — Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey
8. “From fifteen to seventeen she was in training for a heroine; she read all such works as heroines must read to supply their memories with those quotations which are so serviceable and so soothing in the hour of their distress.” — Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey
9. “Mrs. Morland was a very good woman, and wished to see her children every thing they ought to be; but her time was so much occupied in lying-in and teaching the little ones, that her elder daughters were inevitably left to shift for themselves.” — Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey
10. “I am the happiest creature in the world. Perhaps other people have said so before, but not one among them can have been happier than I am.” — Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
11. “She was one of those, who, having once begun, would be always in love.” — Jane Austen, Emma
12. “We are all fools in love.” — Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
13. “I have been a selfish being all my life, in practice, though not in principle.” — Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
14. “How little of permanent happiness could belong to a couple who were only brought together because their passions were stronger than their virtue!” — Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

Timeless Truths Jane Austen Quotes

1. “I must learn to be content with being happier than I deserve.” — Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
2. “You must learn some of my philosophy. Think only of the past as its remembrance gives you pleasure.” — Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
3. “She a beauty! I should as soon call her mother a wit.” — Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
4. “For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbours, and laugh at them in our turn?” — Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
5. “I am only resolved to act in that manner, which will, in my own opinion, constitute my happiness, without reference to you, or to any person so wholly unconnected with me.” — Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
6. “Obstinate, headstrong girl! I am ashamed of you.” — Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
7. “To be fond of dancing was a certain step towards falling in love.” — Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
8. “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.” — Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
9. “My good opinion once lost, is lost forever.” — Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
10. “Laugh as much as you choose, but you will not laugh me out of my opinion.” — Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
11. “I am no longer surprised at your knowing only six accomplished women. I rather wonder now at your knowing any.” — Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
12. “She is tolerable, but not handsome enough to tempt me.” — Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
13. “We all love to instruct, though we can teach only what is not worth knowing.” — Jane Austen, Emma
14. “Surprizes are foolish things. The pleasure is not enhanced, and the inconvenience is often considerable.” — Jane Austen, Emma

For Romantics Jane Austen Quotes

1. “I am afraid that the pleasantness of an employment does not always evince its propriety.” — Jane Austen, Emma
2. “Business, you know, may bring money, but friendship hardly ever does.” — Jane Austen, Emma
3. “I may have lost my heart, but not my self-control.” — Jane Austen, Emma
4. “One man's style must not be the rule of another's.” — Jane Austen, Emma
5. “The sooner every party breaks up, the better.” — Jane Austen, Emma
6. “It is not time or opportunity that is to determine intimacy; — it is disposition alone.” — Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility
7. “Wisdom is better than wit, and in the long run will certainly have the laugh on her side.” — Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility
8. “I will be calm; I will be mistress of myself.” — Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility
9. “It was, perhaps, one of those cases in which advice is good or bad only as the event decides.” — Jane Austen, Persuasion
10. “I hate to hear you talking so like a fine gentleman, and as if women were all fine ladies, instead of rational creatures.” — Jane Austen, Persuasion
11. “One does not love a place the less for having suffered in it, unless it has been all suffering, nothing but suffering.” — Jane Austen, Persuasion
12. “There is not one in a hundred of either sex who is not taken in when they marry.” — Jane Austen, Mansfield Park
13. “How wonderful, how very wonderful the operations of time, and the changes of the human mind!” — Jane Austen, Mansfield Park
14. “Oh! who can ever be tired of Bath?” — Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey

Frequently Asked Questions

What is Jane Austen's most famous quote?

“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.” — the opening line of Pride and Prejudice (1813), and one of the most recognized sentences in English literature.

How many novels did Jane Austen write?

Jane Austen completed six major novels: Sense and Sensibility (1811), Pride and Prejudice (1813), Mansfield Park (1814), Emma (1815), Northanger Abbey (1817), and Persuasion (1817). All quotes in this collection are drawn verbatim from these six works.

Are these quotes verified as Jane Austen's actual words?

Yes. Every quote in this collection has been checked against the published texts of Austen’s novels. Lines that appear only in film adaptations — not in the novels themselves — have been excluded.

What are Jane Austen's quotes mostly about?

Austen wrote about love and marriage, social class, character and morality, wit and folly, and the everyday truths of human nature — all delivered with her signature irony and precision.

Editor’s Picks: Best Jane Austen Quotes

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