Jane Austen

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Summary Quotes Publications and Influence

Summary

Jane Austen (16 December 1775 – 18 July 1817) was an English novelist whose works of romantic fiction, set among the landed gentry, earned her a place as one of the most widely read writers in English literature. Her realism and biting social commentary has gained her historical importance among scholars and critics. Austen lived her entire life as part of a close-knit family located on the lower fringes of the English landed gentry.

Born
Died
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December 16, 1775,
Steventon, Hampshire, England
July 18, 1817,
Winchester, Hampshire, England
Criticism (interpretation), England, Fiction, History, Literature
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Importance is calculated using the length of this author's Wikipedia entry, as well as the number of works by and about this author.
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Quotes by Jane Austen

“Every man is surrounded by a neighborhood of voluntary spies.”
“Where an opinion is general, it is usually correct.”
“Although our productions have afforded more extensive and unaffected pleasure than those of any other literary corporation in the world, no species of composition has been so much decried. And what are you reading, Miss -- -? Oh! it is only a novel! replies the young lady; while she lays down her book with affected indifference, or momentary shame. It is only Cecilia, or Camilla, or Belinda ; or, in short, only some work in which the greatest powers of the mind are displayed, in which the most thorough knowledge of human nature, the happiest delineation of its varieties, the liveliest effusions of wit and humor, are conveyed to the world in the best chosen language.”
“For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbors, and laugh at them in our turn?”
“Surprises are foolish things. The pleasure is not enhanced and the inconvenience is often considerable.”
“It may be possible to do without dancing entirely. Instances have been known of young people passing many, many months successively without being at any ball of any description, and no material injury accrue either to body or mind; but when a beginning is made -- when the felicities of rapid motion have once been, though slightly, felt -- it must be a very heavy set that does not ask for more.”
“One has not great hopes from Birmingham. I always say there is something direful in the sound.”
“Business, you know, may bring you money, but friendship hardly ever does.”
“A woman, especially, if she have the misfortune of knowing anything, should conceal it as well as she can.”
“One half of the world cannot understand the pleasures of the other.”
“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.”
“I am afraid that the pleasantness of an employment does not always evince its propriety.”
“There are certainly are not so many men of large fortune in the world as there are of pretty woman to deserve them.”
“We do not look in our great cities for our best morality.”
“From politics it was an easy step to silence.”
“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.”
“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man is in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.”
“Why not seize the pleasure at once? How often is happiness destroyed by preparation, foolish preparation.”
“Let other pens dwell on guilt and misery.”
“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.”
“One does not love a place the less for having suffered in it, unless it has been all suffering, nothing but suffering.”
“It is always incomprehensible to a man that a woman should ever refuse an offer of marriage.”
“With men he can be rational and unaffected, but when he has ladies to please, every feature works.”
“What dreadful hot weather we have! It keeps me in a continual state of inelegance.”
“A large income is the best recipe for happiness I ever heard of.”
“Nobody can tell what I suffer! But it is always so. Those who do not complain are never pitied.”
“To sit in the shade on a fine day, and look upon verdure is the most perfect refreshment.”
“Those who do not complain are never pitied.”
“Single women have a dreadful propensity for being poor. Which is one very strong argument in favor of matrimony.”
“One cannot be always laughing at a man without now and then stumbling on something witty.”
“In nine cases out of ten, a woman had better show more affection than she feels.”
“It is indolence... Indolence and love of ease; a want of all laudable ambition, of taste for good company, or of inclination to take the trouble of being agreeable, which make men clergymen. A clergyman has nothing to do but be slovenly and selfish; read the newspaper, watch the weather, and quarrel with his wife. His curate does all the work and the business of his own life is to dine.”
“Happiness in marriage is entirely a matter of chance.”
“There is safety in reserve, but no attraction. One cannot love a reserved person.”
“Seldom, very seldom, does complete truth belong to any human disclosure; seldom can it happen that something is not a little disguised, or a little mistaken.”
“There is nothing like staying at home for real comfort.”
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Publications and Influence of Jane Austen

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