Jane Austen May Quotations

Nobody, who has not been in the interior of a family, can say what the difficulties of any individual of that family may be.

You may only call me "Mrs. Darcy"... when you are completely, and perfectly, and incandescently happy.

Now I must give one smirk and then we may be rational again

It sometimes is a disadvantage to be so very guarded. If a woman conceals her affection from the object of it, she may loose the opportunity of fixing him.

He may live in my memory as the most amiable man of my acquaintance..

It is wonderful, for almost all his actions may be traced to pride;-and pride has often been his best friend.

A very narrow income has a tendency to contract the mind, and sour the temper. Those who can barely live, and who live perforce in a very small, and generally very inferior, society, may well be illiberal and cross.

I am fond of history and am very well contented to take the false with the true. In the principal facts they have sources of intelligence in former histories and records, which may be as much depended on, I conclude, as anything that does not actually pass under ones own observation; and as for the little embellishments you speak of, they are embellishments, and I like them as such.

I have been used to consider poetry as "the food of love" said Darcy. "Of a fine, stout, healthy love it may. Everything nourishes what is strong already. But if it be only a slight, thin sort of inclination, I am convinced that one good sonnet will starve it entirely away.

I may have lost my heart, but not my self-control.

I leave it to be settled, by whomsoever it may concern, whether the tendency of this work be altogether to recommend parental tyranny, or reward filial disobedience.

What one means one day, you know, one may not mean the next. Circumstances change, opinions alter.

A single woman, of good fortune, is always respectable, and may be as sensible and pleasant as any body else.

There is nothing like employment, active indispensable employment, for relieving sorrow. Employment, even melancholy, may dispel melancholy.

The wisest and the best of men, nay, the wisest and best of their actions, may be rendered ridiculous by a person whose first object in life is a joke.

Teach us...... that we may feel the importance of every day, of every hour, as it passes.

there is not the least wit in my nature. I am a very matter of fact, plain spoken being, and may blunder on the borders of a repartee for half an hour together without striking it out.

An agreeable manner may set off handsome features, but can never alter plain ones.

a vast deal may be done by those who dare to act.

The world may know my words, but it has no such privileges with my heart

my good qualities are under your protection, and you are to exaggerate them as much as possible; and, in return, it belongs to me to find occasion for teasing and quarreling with you as often as may be...

Every young lady may feel for my heroine in this critical moment, for every young lady has at some time or other known the same agitation.

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.

... strange things may be generally accounted for if their cause be fairly seached out.

Unjust I may have been, weak and resentful I have been, but never inconstant.