Jane Austen

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

Every moment has its pleasures and its hope.

I declare after all there is no enjoyment like reading! How much sooner one tires of any thing than of a book! -- When I have a house of my own, I shall be miserable if I have not an excellent library.

There could have been no two hearts so open, no tastes so similar, no feelings so in unison

How quick come the reasons for approving what we like.

No man is offended by another man's admiration of the woman he loves; it is the woman only who can make it a torment.

Give a girl an education and introduce her properly into the world, and ten to one but she has the means of settling well, without further expense to anybody.

She had been forced into prudence in her youth, she learned romance as she grew older: the natural sequel of an unnatural beginning.

[I]t is well to have as many holds upon happiness as possible.

You must be the best judge of your own happiness.

The Very first moment I beheld him, my heart was irrevocably gone.

...when pain is over, the remembrance of it often becomes a pleasure.

A fondness for reading, properly directed, must be an education in itself.

It is happy for you that you possess the talent of flattering with delicacy. May I ask whether these pleasing attentions proceed from the impulse of the moment, or are they the result of previous study?

To wish was to hope, and to hope was to expect

Stupid men are the only ones worth knowing after all.

I cannot fix on the hour, or the spot, or the look or the words, which laid the foundation. It is too long ago. I was in the middle before I knew that I had begun.

Oh, Lizzy! do anything rather than marry without affection.