Jane Austen's Most Iconic Quotes, from her 6 novels, spanning love, life and friendship.
Pride & Prejudice
"It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife."
"She is tolerable: but not handsome enough to tempt me."
"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."
"Till this moment, I never knew myself."
For a full list of iconic Pride & Prejudice quotes (from the novel, not the movie!), click here.
Emma
"Emma Woodhouse, handsome, clever, and rich"
"A woman is not to marry a man merely because she is asked, or because he is attached to her, and can write a tolerable letter."
"I cannot make speeches, Emma... If I loved you less, I might be able to talk about it more."
Persuasion
"You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope. Tell me not that I am too late, that such precious feelings are gone for ever."
For more Austen quotes about love, click here.
"All the privilege I claim for my own sex (it is not a very enviable one; you need not covet it), is that of loving longest, when existence or when hope is gone."
"Men have had every advantage of us in telling their own story. Education has been theirs in so much higher a degree; the pen has been in their hands. I will not allow books to prove anything."
Northanger Abbey
"The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid."
"Oh! It is only a novel!... 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 humour, are conveyed to the world in the best-chosen language."
Sense & Sensibility
"I could not be happy with a man whose taste did not in every point coincide with my own. He must enter into all my feelings; the same books, the same music must charm us both."
"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."
For more Jane Austen quotes about friendship, click here.
Mansfield Park
"Selfishness must always be forgiven, you know, because there is no hope of a cure"
"A large income is the best recipe for happiness I ever heard of".
Do you have a favorite Austen quote that I've left out?
