85+ Jane Austen Quotes on Life, Love, and Womanhood

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.

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Best 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.” — from Pride and Prejudice
  2. “There is no charm equal to tenderness of heart.” — from Emma Woodhouse, Emma
  3. “I declare after all there is no enjoyment like reading!” — from Caroline Bingley, Pride and Prejudice
  4. “One half of the world cannot understand the pleasures of the other.” — from Emma Woodhouse, Emma
  5. “To be fond of dancing was a certain step towards falling in love.” — from Pride and Prejudice
  6. “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
  7. “There is nothing like staying at home for real comfort.” — from Emma Woodhouse, Emma
  8. “Selfishness must always be forgiven, you know, because there is no hope of a cure.” — from Mary Crawford, Mansfield Park
  9. “Angry people are not always wise.” — from Elizabeth Bennet, Pride and Prejudice
  10. “There is no charm equal to tenderness of heart.” — from Emma Woodhouse, Emma
  11. “It isn’t what we say or think that defines us, but what we do.” — from Mrs. Dashwood, Sense and Sensibility
  12. “I must learn to be content with being happier than I deserve.” — from Edward Ferrars, Sense and Sensibility
  13. “The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid.” — from Henry Tilney, Northanger Abbey
  14. ​”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

  1. “Life seems but a quick succession of busy nothings.” — from Fanny Price, Mansfield Park
  2. “What is right to be done cannot be done too soon.” — from Emma Woodhouse, Emma
  3. “Think only of the past as its remembrance gives you pleasure.” — from Elizabeth Bennet, Pride and Prejudice
  4. “There are people, who the more you do for them, the less they will do for themselves.” — from Emma Woodhouse, Emma
  5. “To sit in the shade on a fine day and look upon verdure is the most perfect refreshment.” — from Fanny Price, Mansfield Park
  6. “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
  7. “A large income is the best recipe for happiness I ever heard of.” — from Mansfield Park
  8. “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
  9. “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

  1. “I hate to hear you talk about all women as if they were fine ladies instead of rational creatures.” — from Anne Elliot, Persuasion
  2. “A woman, especially if she have the misfortune of knowing anything, should conceal it as well as she can.” — from Northanger Abbey
  3. “Men have had every advantage of us in telling their own story.” — from Persuasion
  4. “I always deserve the best treatment because I never put up with any other.” — from Emma Woodhouse, Emma
  5. “A woman is not to marry a man merely because she is asked, or because he is attached to her.” — from Emma Woodhouse, Emma
  6. “There is a stubbornness about me that never can bear to be frightened at the will of others.” — from Elizabeth Bennet, Pride and Prejudice
  7. “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
  8. “I cannot speak well enough to be unintelligible.” — from Northanger Abbey
  9. “I am not one of those who neglect the reigning power to bow to the rising sun.” — from Charles Elliot, Persuasion
  10. “I am not a great reader, and I have pleasure in many things.” — from Elizabeth Bennet, Pride and Prejudice
  11. ​”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
  12. “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
  13. “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
  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.” — from Northanger Abbey

Jane Austen Quotes About Love and Romance

  1. “We are all fools in love.” — Pride and Prejudice
  2. “The distance is nothing when one has a motive.” — Pride and Prejudice
  3. “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
  4. “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
  5. “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
  6. ​“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
  7. “You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you.” — from Mr. Darcy, Pride and Prejudice
  8. “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
  9. “I have been used to consider poetry as ‘the food of love’.” — from Mr. Darcy, Pride and Prejudice
  10. “My affections and wishes are unchanged, but one word from you will silence me on this subject forever.” — from Mr. Darcy, Pride and Prejudice
  11. “I am determined that only the deepest love will induce me into matrimony.” — from Elizabeth Bennet, Pride and Prejudice
  12. “I can listen no longer in silence. I must speak to you by such means as are within my reach.” — from Persuasion
  13. “You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope.” — from Persuasion
  14. “I have loved none but you.” — from Captain Wentworth, Persuasion
  15. ​”One cannot be always laughing at a man without now and then stumbling on something witty.” — from Elizabeth Bennet, Pride and Prejudice
  16. “There is not one in a hundred of either sex, who is not taken in when they marry.” — from Pride and Prejudice
  17. “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

  1. “There are certainly not so many men of large fortune in the world, as there are pretty women to deserve them.” — from Mansfield Park
  2. “A man always imagines a woman to be ready for anybody who asks her.” — from Emma
  3. “Where people wish to attach, they should always be ignorant.” — from Northanger Abbey
  4. “We live at home, quiet, confined, and our feelings prey upon us.” — from Anne Elliot, Persuasion
  5. “Dress is at all times a frivolous distinction, and excessive solicitude about it often destroys its own aim.” — from NorthangerAbbey
  6. “How quick come the reasons for approving what we like!” — from Persuasion
  7. “There are people, who the more you do for them, the less they will do for themselves.” — from Emma Woodhouse, Emma
  8. “It is very difficult for the prosperous to be humble.” — from Pride and Prejudice
  9. “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
  10. “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

  1. “I always deserve the best treatment because I never put up with any other.” — from Emma Woodhouse, Emma
  2. “What are men to rocks and mountains?” — from Elizabeth Bennet, Pride and Prejudice
  3. ​”I could easily forgive his pride, if he had not mortified mine.” — from Elizabeth Bennet, Pride and Prejudice
  4. “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
  5. ​”I have no notion of loving people by halves, it is not my nature.” — from Catherine Morland, Northanger Abbey
  6. “My idea of good company… is the company of clever, well-informed people, who have a great deal of conversation.” — from Anne Elliot, Persuasion
  7. ​”My courage always rises at every attempt to intimidate me.” — Pride and Prejudice
  8. “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

  1. “I do not want people to be very agreeable, as it saves me the trouble of liking them a great deal.”
  2. ​”A person who can write a long letter with ease, cannot write ill.”
  3. ​”I am not at all in a humour for writing; I must write on till I am.”
  4. ​”Single women have a dreadful propensity for being poor.”
  5. “What dreadful hot weather we have! It keeps one in a continual state of inelegance.”
  6. “How much I shall have to tell you when I see you again!”
  7. “Next week I shall begin my operations on my hat, on which you know my principal hopes of happiness depend.”
  8. “I will not say that your mulberry-trees are dead, but I am afraid they’re not alive.”
  9. “I cannot speak well enough to be unintelligible.”
  10. “One does not love a place the less for having suffered in it.”
  11. “A woman, if she have the misfortune of knowing anything, should conceal it as well as she can.”
  12. “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…”
  13. “I have been used to consider poetry as ‘the food of love’.”
  14. “I could not sit seriously down to write a serious Romance under any other motive than to save my life.”

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