Jane Austen Quotes about Life, Love, and More

Pierce Alquist

Senior Contributor

Pierce Alquist is a transplanted New Yorker living and working in the publishing scene in Boston. Don’t worry if she fooled you, the red hair is misleading. She’s a literature in translation devotee and reviewer and lover of small, independent presses. A voracious traveler and foodie, you can find her in her kitchen making borscht or covered in red pepper paste as she perfects her kimchi recipe.

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Jane Austen is beloved the world over for her wit, charm, and keen understanding of the human heart. Enjoy these Jane Austen quotes about life, love, society, money, marriage, and more!

“Selfishness must always be forgiven you know, because there is no hope of a cure.” —Mansfield Park

“It is always incomprehensible to a man that a woman should ever refuse an offer of marriage. A man always imagines a woman to be ready for anybody who asks her.” —Emma

“Laugh as much as you choose, but you will not laugh me out of my opinion.” —Pride and Prejudice

“I wish, as well as everybody else, to be perfectly happy; but, like everybody else, it must be in my own way.” —Sense and Sensibility

“I always deserve the best treatment because I never put up with any other.” —Emma

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

“Business, you know, may bring money, but friendship hardly ever does.” —Emma

“A large income is the best recipe for happiness I ever heard of.” —Mansfield Park

“There is no charm equal to tenderness of heart.” —Emma

“Pictures of perfection, as you know, make me sick and wicked” —Jane Austen’s Letters

“I will be calm. I will be mistress of myself.” —Sense and Sensibility

“Is not general incivility the very essence of love?” —Pride and Prejudice

“A woman, especially if she have the misfortune of knowing anything, should conceal it as well as she can.” —Northanger Abbey

“You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope.” —Persuasion

“Friendship is certainly the finest balm for the pangs of disappointed love.” —Northanger Abbey

“[N]obody minds having what is too good for them.” —Mansfield Park

“A man does not recover from such a devotion of the heart to such a woman! He ought not; he does not.” —Persuasion

“We have all a better guide in ourselves, if we would attend to it, than any other person can be.” —Mansfield Park

“Nothing ever fatigues me, but doing what I do not like.” —Mansfield Park

“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.” —Pride and Prejudice

“For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbors, and laugh at them in our turn?” —Pride and Prejudice

“There is nothing like staying at home for real comfort.” —Emma

“We are to have a tiny party here tonight. I hate tiny parties—they force one into constant exertion.” —Jane Austen’s Letters

“Know your own happiness.” —Sense and Sensibility

“I do not want people to be very agreeable, as it saves me the trouble of liking them a great deal.” —Jane Austen’s Letters

“To be fond of dancing was a certain step towards falling in love.” —Pride and Prejudice

“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.” —Pride and Prejudice

Do you have favorite Jane Austen quotes that’s aren’t on the list? Share them in the comments! Oh, and get lost in Austen with these 13 Adaptations for Jane Austen Fans.