Jane Austen (1775 – 1817)
English novelist who recorded the domestic manners of the landed gentry.
...from politics, it was an easy step to silence.
What dreadful hot weather we have! It keeps one in a continual state of inelegance.
Surprizes are foolish things. The pleasure is not enhanced, and the inconvenience is often considerable.
For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbors and laugh at them in our turn?
Jane Austen was born before those bonds which (we are told) protected women from truth, were burst by the Brontės or elaborately untied by George Eliot. Yet the fact remains that Jane Austen knew more about men than either of them. Jane Austen may have been protected from truth: but it was precious little of truth that was protected from her.
But there certainly are not so many men of large fortune in the world as there are pretty women to deserve them.
I cannot anyhow continue to find people agreeable; I respect Mrs. Chamberlayne for doing her hair well, but cannot feel a more tender sentiment. Miss Langley is like any other short girl, with a broad nose and wide mouth, fashionable dress and exposed bosom. Adm. Stanhope is a gentleman-like man, but then his legs are too short and his tail too long.
Life seems but a quick succession of busy nothings.
Here I am once more in this scene of dissipation and vice, and I begin already to find my morals corrupted.
There were several Battles between the Yorkists and the Lancastrians, in which the former (as they ought) usually won.
She knew what she knew, like a sound dogmatist: she did not know what she did not like a sound agnostic.
We do not look in great cities for our best morality.
A large income is the best recipe for happiness I ever heard of.
We are to have a tiny party here tonight. I hate tiny parties, they force one into constant exertion.
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 do not want people to be very agreeable, as it saves me the trouble of liking them a great deal.
Happiness in marriage is entirely a matter of chance.
Could they be perpetrated without being known, in a country like this, where social and literary intercourse is on such a footing, where every man is surrounded by a neighbourhood of voluntary spies, and where roads and newspapers lay everything open?
It would be mortifying to the feelings of many ladies, could they be made to understand how little the heart of man is affected by what is costly or new in their attire.
She [Mary I] married Philip King of Spain, who in her sister's reign, was famous for building Armadas.