Quotes & anectdotes from
the wise,
the foolish,
the courageous &
the drunk

Jane Austen Novelist

  • Gender: Female
  • Citizenship: United Kingdom
  • Born: Dec 16, 1775
  • Died: Jul 18, 1817

Jane Austen was an English novelist whose works of romantic fiction, set among the landed gentry, earned her a place as one of the most widely read writers in English literature. Her realism, biting irony and social commentary as well as her acclaimed plots have gained her historical importance among scholars and critics.

Austen lived her entire life as part of a close-knit family located on the lower fringes of the English landed gentry. She was educated primarily by her father and older brothers as well as through her own reading. The steadfast support of her family was critical to her development as a professional writer. From her teenage years into her thirties she experimented with various literary forms, including an epistolary novel which she then abandoned, wrote and extensively revised three major novels and began a fourth. From 1811 until 1816, with the release of Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park and Emma, she achieved success as a published writer. She wrote two additional novels, Northanger Abbey and Persuasion, both published posthumously in 1818, and began a third, which was eventually titled Sanditon, but died before completing it.

To sit in the shade on a fine day and look upon verdure is the most perfect refreshment.

The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid.

There are certainly not so many men of large fortune in the world, as there are pretty women to deserve them.

Business, you know, may bring you money, but friendship hardly ever does.

One man's ways may be as good as another's, but we all like our own best.

There is nothing like staying at home for real comfort.

Good-humoured, unaffected girls, will not do for a man who has been used to sensible women. They are two distinct orders of being.

It is always incomprehensible to a man that a woman should ever refuse an offer of marriage.

General benevolence, but not general friendship, made a man what he ought to be.

Happiness in marriage is entirely a matter of chance.

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.

Friendship is certainly the finest balm for the pangs of disappointed love.

A large income is the best recipe for happiness I ever heard of.

From politics, it was an easy step to silence.

They are much to be pitied who have not been given a taste for nature early in life.

Single women have a dreadful propensity for being poor. Which is one very strong argument in favor of matrimony.

Respect for right conduct is felt by every body.

Selfishness must always be forgiven you know, because there is no hope of a cure.

I do not want people to be very agreeable, as it saves me the trouble of liking them a great deal.

A lady's imagination is very rapid it jumps from admiration to love, from love to matrimony in a moment.

We do not look in our great cities for our best morality.