It’s kind of wild to think Jane Austen wrote for fun as a teen, only published her first book in her mid-thirties, and never saw how loved she’d become. Her stories didn’t make her rich or wildly famous back then—but they sure have stuck around. And honestly? That says a lot.
Here are 85+ quotes that show just how timeless her words are. You’ll find reflections on everyday life, the joys and struggles of love, and what it meant to be a woman in her time. She said so much with so little—and it still resonates today.
Table of Contents
Best Jane Austen Quotes
- “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.” — from Pride and Prejudice
- “There is no charm equal to tenderness of heart.” — from Emma Woodhouse, Emma
- “I declare after all there is no enjoyment like reading!” — from Caroline Bingley, Pride and Prejudice
- “One half of the world cannot understand the pleasures of the other.” — from Emma Woodhouse, Emma
- “To be fond of dancing was a certain step towards falling in love.” — from Pride and Prejudice
- “A lady’s imagination is very rapid; it jumps from admiration to love, from love to matrimony in a moment.” — from Mr. Darcy, Pride and Prejudice
- “There is nothing like staying at home for real comfort.” — from Emma Woodhouse, Emma
- “Selfishness must always be forgiven, you know, because there is no hope of a cure.” — from Mary Crawford, Mansfield Park
- “Angry people are not always wise.” — from Elizabeth Bennet, Pride and Prejudice
- “There is no charm equal to tenderness of heart.” — from Emma Woodhouse, Emma
- “It isn’t what we say or think that defines us, but what we do.” — from Mrs. Dashwood, Sense and Sensibility
- “I must learn to be content with being happier than I deserve.” — from Edward Ferrars, Sense and Sensibility
- “The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid.” — from Henry Tilney, Northanger Abbey
- ”I am not afraid of being overpowered by the impression. It will pass away soon enough.” — from Mr. Bennet, Pride and Prejudice
Jane Austen Quotes About Life
- “Life seems but a quick succession of busy nothings.” — from Fanny Price, Mansfield Park
- “What is right to be done cannot be done too soon.” — from Emma Woodhouse, Emma
- “Think only of the past as its remembrance gives you pleasure.” — from Elizabeth Bennet, Pride and Prejudice
- “There are people, who the more you do for them, the less they will do for themselves.” — from Emma Woodhouse, Emma
- “To sit in the shade on a fine day and look upon verdure is the most perfect refreshment.” — from Fanny Price, Mansfield Park
- “It is not time or opportunity that is to determine intimacy;—it is disposition alone. Seven years would be insufficient to make some people acquainted with each other, and seven days are more than enough for others.” — from Marianne Dashwood, Sense and Sensibility
- “A large income is the best recipe for happiness I ever heard of.” — from Mansfield Park
- “Yes, vanity is a weakness indeed. But pride—where there is a real superiority of mind, pride will be always under good regulation.” — from Mr. Darcy, Pride and Prejudice
- “I have been a selfish being all my life, in practice, though not in principle.” — from Mr. Darcy, Pride and Prejudice
Jane Austen Quotes About Women
- “I hate to hear you talk about all women as if they were fine ladies instead of rational creatures.” — from Anne Elliot, Persuasion
- “A woman, especially if she have the misfortune of knowing anything, should conceal it as well as she can.” — from Northanger Abbey
- “Men have had every advantage of us in telling their own story.” — from Persuasion
- “I always deserve the best treatment because I never put up with any other.” — from Emma Woodhouse, Emma
- “A woman is not to marry a man merely because she is asked, or because he is attached to her.” — from Emma Woodhouse, Emma
- “There is a stubbornness about me that never can bear to be frightened at the will of others.” — from Elizabeth Bennet, Pride and Prejudice
- “I am no longer surprised at your knowing only six accomplished women. I rather wonder now at your knowing any.” — from Elizabeth Bennet, Pride and Prejudice
- “I cannot speak well enough to be unintelligible.” — from Northanger Abbey
- “I am not one of those who neglect the reigning power to bow to the rising sun.” — from Charles Elliot, Persuasion
- “I am not a great reader, and I have pleasure in many things.” — from Elizabeth Bennet, Pride and Prejudice
- ”A woman must have a thorough knowledge of music, singing, drawing, dancing, and the modern languages… and besides all this, she must possess a certain something in her air and manner of walking.” — from Mr. Darcy, Pride and Prejudice
- “She had been forced into prudence in her youth, she learned romance as she grew older—the natural sequel of an unnatural beginning.” — from Persuasion
- “I do not think I ever opened a book in my life which had not something to say upon woman’s inconstancy.” — from Capt. Harville, Persuasion
- “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.” — from Northanger Abbey
Jane Austen Quotes About Love and Romance
- “We are all fools in love.” — Pride and Prejudice
- “The distance is nothing when one has a motive.” — 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.” — Pride and Prejudice
- “I could not be happy with a man whose taste did not in every point coincide with my own. He must enter in all my feelings; the same books, the same music must charm us both.” — from Marianne Dashwood, Sense and Sensibility
- “The more I see of the world, the more am I dissatisfied with it; and every day confirms my belief of the inconsistency of all human characters.” — from Elizabeth Bennet, Pride and Prejudice
- “I am determined that only the deepest love will induce me into matrimony. So, I shall end an old maid, and teach your ten children to embroider cushions and play their instruments very ill.” — from Elizabeth Bennet, Pride and Prejudice
- “You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you.” — from Mr. Darcy, Pride and Prejudice
- “I cannot fix on the hour, or the spot, or the look or the words, which laid the foundation.” — from Mr. Darcy, Pride and Prejudice
- “I have been used to consider poetry as ‘the food of love’.” — from Mr. Darcy, Pride and Prejudice
- “My affections and wishes are unchanged, but one word from you will silence me on this subject forever.” — from Mr. Darcy, Pride and Prejudice
- “I am determined that only the deepest love will induce me into matrimony.” — from Elizabeth Bennet, Pride and Prejudice
- “I can listen no longer in silence. I must speak to you by such means as are within my reach.” — from Persuasion
- “You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope.” — from Persuasion
- “I have loved none but you.” — from Captain Wentworth, Persuasion
- ”One cannot be always laughing at a man without now and then stumbling on something witty.” — from Elizabeth Bennet, Pride and Prejudice
- “There is not one in a hundred of either sex, who is not taken in when they marry.” — from Pride and Prejudice
- “I cannot make speeches… If I loved you less, I might be able to talk about it more.” — from Mr. Knightley (to Emma), Emma
Jane Austen Quotes About Society
- “There are certainly not so many men of large fortune in the world, as there are pretty women to deserve them.” — from Mansfield Park
- “A man always imagines a woman to be ready for anybody who asks her.” — from Emma
- “Where people wish to attach, they should always be ignorant.” — from Northanger Abbey
- “We live at home, quiet, confined, and our feelings prey upon us.” — from Anne Elliot, Persuasion
- “Dress is at all times a frivolous distinction, and excessive solicitude about it often destroys its own aim.” — from NorthangerAbbey
- “How quick come the reasons for approving what we like!” — from Persuasion
- “There are people, who the more you do for them, the less they will do for themselves.” — from Emma Woodhouse, Emma
- “It is very difficult for the prosperous to be humble.” — from Pride and Prejudice
- “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.” — from Emma
- “I speak what appears to me the general opinion; and where an opinion is general, it is usually correct.” — from Mansfield Park
Empowering Jane Austen Quotes from Her Heroines
- “I always deserve the best treatment because I never put up with any other.” — from Emma Woodhouse, Emma
- “What are men to rocks and mountains?” — from Elizabeth Bennet, Pride and Prejudice
- ”I could easily forgive his pride, if he had not mortified mine.” — from Elizabeth Bennet, Pride and Prejudice
- “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.” — from Anne Elliot, Persuasion
- ”I have no notion of loving people by halves, it is not my nature.” — from Catherine Morland, Northanger Abbey
- “My idea of good company… is the company of clever, well-informed people, who have a great deal of conversation.” — from Anne Elliot, Persuasion
- ”My courage always rises at every attempt to intimidate me.” — Pride and Prejudice
- “There is nothing I would not do for those who are really my friends.” — Northanger Abbey
Quotes from Jane Austen’s Letters and Personal Writings
- “I do not want people to be very agreeable, as it saves me the trouble of liking them a great deal.”
- ”A person who can write a long letter with ease, cannot write ill.”
- ”I am not at all in a humour for writing; I must write on till I am.”
- ”Single women have a dreadful propensity for being poor.”
- “What dreadful hot weather we have! It keeps one in a continual state of inelegance.”
- “How much I shall have to tell you when I see you again!”
- “Next week I shall begin my operations on my hat, on which you know my principal hopes of happiness depend.”
- “I will not say that your mulberry-trees are dead, but I am afraid they’re not alive.”
- “I cannot speak well enough to be unintelligible.”
- “One does not love a place the less for having suffered in it.”
- “A woman, if she have the misfortune of knowing anything, should conceal it as well as she can.”
- “I will only add in justice to men, that though to the larger and more trifling part of the sex, imbecility in females is a great enhancement of their personal charms…”
- “I have been used to consider poetry as ‘the food of love’.”
- “I could not sit seriously down to write a serious Romance under any other motive than to save my life.”
