Jane Austen

I must learn to be content with being happier than I deserve.

I cannot speak well enough to be unintelligible.

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

Yes, vanity is a weakness indeed. But pride - where there is a real superiority of mind, pride will be always under good regulation.

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

Had I been in love, I could not have been more wretchedly blind. But vanity, not love, has been my folly.

We all know him to be a proud, unpleasant sort of man; but this would be nothing if you really liked him.

If I could but know his heart, everything would become easy.

Why not seize the pleasure at once? -- How often is happiness destroyed by preparation, foolish preparation!

There is nothing I would not do for those who are really my friends. I have no notion of loving people by halves, it is not my nature.

In vain have I struggled. It will not do. My feelings will not be repressed. You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you.

The more I know of the world, the more I am convinced that I shall never see a man whom I can really love. I require so much!

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

She is tolerable, but not handsome enough to tempt me, and I am in no humor at present to give consequence to young ladies who are slighted by other men.

Men have had every advantage of us in telling their own story. Education has been theirs in so much higher a degree; the pen has been in their hands. I will not allow books to prove anything.

Do not give way to useless alarm; though it is right to be prepared for the worst, there is no occasion to look on it as certain.

but for my own part, if a book is well written, I always find it too short.

And pictures of perfection, as you know, make me sick and wicked.