Jane Austen

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

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

— Spoken by a character · Chapter 14

One does not love a place the less for having suffered in it, unless it has been all suffering, nothing but suffering, which was by no means the case at Lyme.

— Anne · Chapter XX

“But I hate to hear you talking so like a fine gentleman, and as if women were all fine ladies, instead of rational creatures. We none of us expect to be in smooth water all our days.”

— Spoken by a character · Chapter VIII

Know your own happiness. You want nothing but patience--or give it a more fascinating name, call it hope.

— Spoken by a character · Chapter XIX

I never wish to offend, but I am so foolishly shy, that I often seem negligent, when I am only kept back by my natural awkwardness.

— Spoken by a character · Chapter XVII

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

For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbours, and laugh at them in our turn?

— Spoken by a character · Chapter LVII

Emma Woodhouse, handsome, clever, and rich, with a comfortable home and happy disposition, seemed to unite some of the best blessings of existence; and had lived nearly twenty-one years in the world with very little to distress or vex her.

There are people, who the more you do for them, the less they will do for themselves.