There is safety in reserve, but no attraction. One cannot love a reserved person. – Jane Austen
I declare after all there is no enjoyment like reading! How much sooner one tires of anything than of a book! When I have a house of my own, I shall be miserable if I have not an excellent library. – Jane Austen
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
Why not seize the pleasure at once? How often is happiness destroyed by preparation, foolish preparation. – Jane Austen
You mistake me, my dear. 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
A ladys imagination is very rapid it jumps from admiration to love, from love to matrimony in a moment. – Jane Austen
One mans ways may be as good as anothers, but we all like our own best. – Jane Austen
Good-humoured, unaffected girls, will not do for a man who has been used to sensible women. They are two distinct orders of being. – Jane Austen
There are certainly not so many men of large fortune in the world, as there are pretty women to deserve them. – Jane Austen
Single women have a dreadful propensity for being poor. Which is one very strong argument in favor of matrimony. – Jane Austen
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
Respect for right conduct is felt by every body. – Jane Austen
From politics, it was an easy step to silence. – Jane Austen
They are much to be pitied who have not been given a taste for nature early in life. – Jane Austen
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
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
It is always incomprehensible to a man that a woman should ever refuse an offer of marriage. – Jane Austen
Happiness in marriage is entirely a matter of chance. – Jane Austen
I do not want people to be very agreeable, as it saves me the trouble of liking them a great deal. – Jane Austen
The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid. – Jane Austen
