The Best Jane Austen Quotes on Love from (almost) everyone's favorite novel, Pride & Prejudice. Do you remember who said what?
Given that Mr Darcy is considered the quintessential male hero, who would be a better choice for love quotes than Jane Austen? (Somewhat ironic, given that she never married!) For the best film adaptations of Austen's novels, click here.)
"To be fond of dancing was a certain step towards falling in love."
"A lady’s imagination is very rapid; it jumps from admiration to love, from love to matrimony, in a moment."
"There is so much of gratitude or vanity in almost every attachment, that it is not safe to leave any to itself. We can all begin freely—a slight preference is natural enough; but there are very few of us who have heart enough to be really in love without encouragement."
"In nine cases out of ten, a woman had better show more affection than she feels."
"I have been used to consider poetry as the food of love."
"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."
"Is not general incivility the very essence of love?"
"How little of permanent happiness could belong to a couple who were only brought together because their passions were stronger than their virtue."
"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."
"He expressed himself on the occasion as sensibly and as warmly as a man violently in love can be supposed to do."
"I cannot fix on the hour, or the spot, or the look, or the words, which laid the foundation. It is too long ago. I was in the middle before I knew that I had begun."
"If your feelings are still what they were last April, tell me so at once. My affections and wishes are unchanged; but one word from you will silence me on this subject for ever."
"I must confess that I love him better than I do Bingley. I am afraid you will be angry."
"I do, I do like him... I love him. Indeed he has no improper pride. He is perfectly amiable."
"Happiness in marriage is entirely a matter of chance. If the dispositions of the parties are ever so well known to each other, or ever so similar beforehand, it does not advance their felicity in the least."
"Next to being married, a girl likes to be crossed in love a little now and then. It is something to think of, and gives her a sort of distinction among her companions."
"Oh, Lizzy! do anything rather than marry without affection."
"I am now convinced, my dear aunt, that I have never been much in love; for had I really experienced that pure and elevating passion, I should at present detest his very name, and wish him all manner of evil."
"Darcy had never been so bewitched by any woman as he was by her."
"She began now to comprehend that he was exactly the man who, in disposition and talents, would most suit her."
"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."
"He had done all this for a girl whom he could neither regard nor esteem. Her heart did whisper that he had done it for her."
Which one of these Austen love quotes is your favorite?
