The Wit of Jane Austen

August 19, 2005
Jane Austen

it is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man is in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.
A large income is the best recipe for happiness I ever heard of.
A woman, especially, if she have the misfortune of knowing anything, should conceal it as well as she can.
An engaged woman is always more agreeable than a disengaged. She is satisfied with herself. Her cares are over, and she feels that she may exert all her powers of pleasing without suspicion. All is safe with a lady engaged; no harm can be done.
Business, you know, may bring you money, but friendship hardly ever does.
Every man is surrounded by a neighborhood of voluntary spies.
For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbors and laugh at them in our turn?
From politics, it was an easy step to silence.
Happiness in marriage is entirely a matter of chance.
Human nature is so well disposed towards those who are in interesting situations, that a young person, who either marries or dies, is sure of being kindly spoken of.
I am afraid that the pleasantness of an employment does not always evince its propriety.
I do not want people to be very agreeable, as it saves me the trouble of liking them a great deal.
It is always incomprehensible to a man that a woman should ever refuse an offer of marriage.
It was, perhaps, one of those cases in which advice is good or bad only as the event decides.
It will, I believe, be everywhere found, that as the clergy are, or are not what they ought to be, so are the rest of the nation.
Let other pens dwell on guilt and misery.
Life seems but a quick succession of busy nothings.
Nobody can tell what I suffer! But it is always so. Those who do not complain are never pitied.
Nobody minds having what is too good for them.
One cannot be always laughing at a man without now and then stumbling on something witty.
One does not love a place the less for having suffered in it, unless it has been all suffering, nothing but suffering.
One half of the world cannot understand the pleasures of the other.
One has not great hopes from Birmingham. I always say there is something direful in the sound.
Single women have a dreadful propensity for being poor. Which is one very strong argument in favor of matrimony.
Surprises are foolish things. The pleasure is not enhanced, and the inconvenience is often considerable.
There are certainly are not so many men of large fortune in the world as there are of pretty woman to deserve them.
There is nothing like staying at home for real comfort.
Those who do not complain are never pitied.
To be fond of dancing was a certain step towards falling in love.
To look almost pretty is an acquisition of higher delight to a girl who has been looking plain for the first fifteen years of her life than a beauty from her cradle can ever receive.
To sit in the shade on a fine day and look upon verdure is the most perfect refreshment.
We do not look in our great cities for our best morality.
We met Dr. Hall in such deep mourning that either his mother, his wife, or himself must be dead.
What dreadful hot weather we have! It keeps me in a continual state of inelegance.
Where an opinion is general, it is usually correct.
Why not seize the pleasure at once? How often is happiness destroyed by preparation, foolish preparation!
With men he can be rational and unaffected, but when he has ladies to please, every feature works.
You mistake me, my dear. I have a high respect for your nerves. They are my old friends. I have heard you mention them with consideration these twenty years at least.
A person who can write a long letter with ease, cannot write ill.
Nothing is more deceitful than the appearance of humility. It is often only carelessness of opinion, and sometimes an indirect boast.
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.
Man is more robust than woman, but he is not longer lived; which exactly explains my view of the nature of their attachments.
If any one faculty of our nature may be called more wonderful than the rest, I do think it is memory. There seems something more speakingly incomprehensible in the powers, the failures, the inequalities of memory, than in any other of our intelligences. The memory is sometimes so retentive, so serviceable, so obedient; at others, so bewildered and so weak; and at others again, so tyrannic, so beyond control! We are, to be sure, a miracle every way; but our powers of recollecting and of forgetting do seem peculiarly past finding out.
If there is anything disagreeable going on men are always sure to get out of it.
What strange creatures brothers are!
A lady's imagination is very rapid; it jumps from admiration to love, from love to matrimony in a moment.
Silly things do cease to be silly if they are done by sensible people in an impudent way.
The enthusiasm of a woman's love is even beyond the biographer's.
But when a young lady is to be a heroine, the perverseness of forty surrounding families cannot prevent her. Something must and will happen to throw a hero in her way.