Jeni > Jeni's Quotes

“There is, I believe, in every disposition a tendency to some particular evil, a natural defect, which not even the best education can overcome."
"And your defect is a propensity to hate everybody."
"And yours," he replied with a smile, "is wilfully to misunderstand them.”
― Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

“Men were put into the world to teach women the law of compromise. ”
― Jane Austin

“Could there be finer symptoms? Is not general incivility the very essence of love?”
― Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

“I cannot think well of a man who sports with any woman's feelings; and there may often be a great deal more suffered than a stander-by can judge of.”
― Jane Austen

“for he is such a disagreeable man, that it would be quite a misfortune to be liked by him.”
― Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

“Anne hoped she had outlived the age of blushing; but the age of emotion she certainly had not.”
― Jane Austen, Persuasion

“I certainly have not the talent which some people possess," said Darcy, "of conversing easily with those I have never seen before. I cannot catch their tone of conversation, or appear interested in their concerns, as I often see done.”
― Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

“Do not consider me now as an elegant female intending to plague you, but as a rational creature speaking the truth from her heart.”
― Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

“We certainly do not forget you, so soon as you forget us. It is, perhaps, our fate rather than our merit. We cannot help ourselves.”
― Jane Austen, Persuasion

“They had no conversation together, no intercourse but what the commonest civility required. Once so much to each other! Now nothing! There had been a time, when of all the large party now filling the drawing-room at Uppercross, they would have found it most difficult to cease to speak to one another. With the exception, perhaps, of Admiral and Mrs. Croft, who seemed particularly attached and happy, (Anne could allow no other exception even among the married couples) there could have been no two hearts so open, no tastes so simliar, no feelings so in unison, no countenances so beloved. Now they were as strangers; nay, worse than strangers, for they could never become aquainted. It was a perpetual estrangement.”
― Jane Austen, Persuasion

“Now they were as strangers; worse than strangers, for they could never become acquainted.”
― Jane Austen, Persuasion

“It is not time or opportunity that is to determine intimacy;—it is disposition alone. Seven years would be insufficient to make some people acquainted with each other, and seven days are more than enough for others.”
― Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility

“His cold politeness, his ceremonious grace, were worse than anything.”
― Jane Austen, Persuasion

“Dare not say that man forgets sooner than woman, that his love has an earlier death.”
― Jane Austen, Persuasion

“However, he wrote some verses on her, and very pretty they were.”
“And so ended his affection,” said Elizabeth impatiently. “There has been many a one, I fancy, overcome in the same way. I wonder who first discovered the efficacy of poetry in driving away love!”
“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.”
― Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

“She was convinced that she could have been happy with him, when it was no longer likely they should meet.”
― Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

“She understood him. He could not forgive her,-but he could not be unfeeling. Though condemning her for the past, and considering it with high and unjest resentment, though perfectly careless of her, and though becoming attached to another, still he could not see her suffer, without the desire of giving her relief. It was a remainder of former sentiment; it was an impuse of pure, though unacknowledged friendship; it was a proof of his own warm and amiable heart, which she could not contemplate without emotions so compounded of pleasure and pain, that she knew not which prevailed.”
― Jane Austen, Persuasion

“Yes, you know enough of my frankness to believe me capable of that. After abusing you so abominably to your face, I could have no scruple in abusing you to all your relations.”
-Elizabeth Bennet”
― Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

“Heaven forbid! -- That would be the greatest misfortune of all! -- To find a man agreeable whom one is determined to hate! -- Do not wish me such an evil.”
― Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

“To love is to burn, to be on fire.”
― Jane Austen

“They parted at last with mutual civility, and possibly a mutual desire of never meeting again.”
― Jane Austen

“Where the heart is really attached, I know very well how little one can be pleased with the attention of any body else.”
― Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey

“She certainly did not hate him. No; hatred had vanished long ago, and she had almost as long been ashamed of ever feeling a dislike against him, that could be so called. The respect created by the conviction of his valuable qualities, though at first unwillingly admitted, had for some time ceased to be repugnant to her feelings; and it was now heightened into somewhat of a friendlier nature, by the testimony so highly in his favour, and bringing forward his disposition in so amiable a light, which yesterday had produced. But above all, above respect and esteem, there was a motive within her of good will which could not be overlooked. It was gratitude.--Gratitude not merely for having once loved her, but for loving her still well enough, to forgive all the petulance and acrimony of her manner in rejecting him, and all the unjust accusations accompanying her rejection. He who, she had been persuaded, would avoid her as his greatest enemy, seemed, on this accidental meeting, most eager to preserve the acquaintance, and without any indelicate display of regard, or any peculiarity of manner, where their two selves only were concerned, was soliciting the good opinion of her friends, and bent on making her known to his sister. Such a change in a man of so much pride, excited not only astonishment but gratitude--for to love, ardent love, it must be attributed; and as such its impression on her was of a sort to be encouraged, as by no means unpleasing, though it could not exactly be defined.”
― Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

“I certainly have not the talent which some people possess, of conversing easily with those I have never seen before.”
― Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

“Such squeamish youths as cannot bear to be connected with a little absurdity are not worth a regret.”
― Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

“We must not be so ready to fancy ourselves intentionally injured. We must not expect a lively young man to be always so guarded and circumspect. It is very often nothing but our own vanity that deceives us. Women fancy admiration means more than it does.”
― Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

“It has sunk him, I cannot say how much it has sunk him in my opinion. So unlike what a man should be!-None of that upright integrity, that strict adherence to truth and principle, that distain of trick and littleness, which a man should display in every transaction of his life.”
― Jane Austen, Emma

“A person who is knowingly bent on bad behavior, gets upset when better
behavior is expected of them.”
― Jane Austen

“I am determined that nothing but the deepest love could ever induce me into matrimony. [Elizabeth]”
― Jane Austen

“His own enjoyment, or his own ease, was, in every particular, his ruling principle.”
― Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility