170+ Best Jane Austen Quotes: Love, Wit, Wisdom & Life Lessons – 2026

Jane Austen remains one of the most quoted English novelists in history. This list brings together 170+ best Jane Austen quotes for 2026, sorted by theme so you can find the right words fast.

Best Jane Austen Quotes on Love and Romance

• “A lady’s imagination is very rapid; it jumps from admiration to love, from love to matrimony in a moment.” — Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
• “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.” — Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
• “You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope…I have loved none but you.” — Jane Austen, Persuasion
• “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.” — Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
• “If I loved you less, I might be able to talk about it more.” — Jane Austen, Emma
• “The Very first moment I beheld him, my heart was irrevocably gone.” — Jane Austen, Love and Friendship
• “When I fall in love, it will be forever.” — Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility
• “A man does not recover from such devotion of the heart to such a woman! He ought not; he does not.” — Jane Austen, Persuasion
• “All the privilege I claim for my own sex is that of loving longest, when existence or when hope is gone!” — Jane Austen, Persuasion
• “He admires as a lover, not as a connoisseur.” — Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility
• “Is not general incivility the very essence of love?” — Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
• “To be fond of dancing was a certain step towards falling in love.” — Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
• “There is no charm equal to tenderness of heart.” — Jane Austen
• “Do anything rather than marry without affection.” — Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
• “A girl likes to be crossed a little in love now and then.” — Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
• “You showed me how insufficient were all my pretensions to please a woman worthy of being pleased.” — Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
• “Where people are really attached, poverty itself is wealth.” — Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey
• “No man is offended by another man’s admiration of the woman he loves; it is the woman only who can make it a torment.” — Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey
• “To wish was to hope, and to hope was to expect.” — Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility
• “It is not time or opportunity that is to determine intimacy; it is disposition alone.” — Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility
• “If I could but know his heart, everything would become easy.” — Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility
• “There could have been no two hearts so open, no tastes so similar, no feelings so in unison.” — Jane Austen, Persuasion

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Famous Jane Austen Quotes from Pride and Prejudice

• “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.” — Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
• “Angry people are not always wise.” — Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
• “What are men to rocks and mountains?” — Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
• “There is a stubbornness about me that never can bear to be frightened at the will of others. My courage always rises at every attempt to intimidate me.” — Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
• “I could easily forgive his pride, if he had not mortified mine.” — Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
• “I must learn to be content with being happier than I deserve.” — Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
• “You are too generous to trifle with me. If your feelings are still what they were last April, tell me so at once.” — Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
• “My good opinion once lost, is lost forever.” — Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
• “Till this moment I never knew myself.” — Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
• “Nothing is more deceitful than the appearance of humility. It is often only carelessness of opinion, and sometimes an indirect boast.” — Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
• “One cannot be always laughing at a man without now and then stumbling on something witty.” — Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
• “I am only resolved to act in that manner, which will, in my own opinion, constitute my happiness.” — Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
• “But people themselves alter so much, that there is something new to be observed in them for ever.” — Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
• “Happiness in marriage is entirely a matter of chance.” — Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
• “In nine cases out of ten, a woman had better show more affection than she feels.” — Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
• “I was given good principles, but left to follow them in pride and conceit.” — Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
• “Yes, vanity is a weakness indeed. But pride, where there is a real superiority of mind, will always be under good regulation.” — Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
• “The power of doing anything with quickness is always prized much by the possessor, and often without any attention to the imperfection of the performance.” — Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
• “I am happier even than Jane; she only smiles, I laugh.” — Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
• “One cannot know what a man really is by the end of a fortnight.” — Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

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Best Jane Austen Quotes on Life and Happiness

• “Ah! There is nothing like staying at home, for real comfort.” — Jane Austen, Emma
• “Know your own happiness. Want for nothing but patience, or give it a more fascinating name: call it hope.” — Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility
• “What have wealth and grandeur to do with happiness?” — Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility
• “A large income is the best recipe for happiness I ever heard of.” — Jane Austen, Mansfield Park
• “I wish, as well as everybody else, to be perfectly happy; but, like everybody else, it must be in my own way.” — Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility
• “You must be the best judge of your own happiness.” — Jane Austen, Emma
• “Money can only give happiness where there is nothing else to give it.” — Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility
• “How often is happiness destroyed by preparation, foolish preparation!” — Jane Austen, Emma
• “It is very difficult for the prosperous to be humble.” — Jane Austen, Emma
• “…when pain is over, the remembrance of it often becomes a pleasure.” — Jane Austen, Persuasion
• “Wherever you are you should always be contented, but especially at home, because there you must spend the most of your time.” — Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey
• “Life seems but a quick succession of busy nothings.” — Jane Austen, Mansfield Park
• “To sit in the shade on a fine day, and look upon verdure, is the most perfect refreshment.” — Jane Austen, Mansfield Park
• “Her own thoughts and reflections were habitually her best companions.” — Jane Austen, Mansfield Park
• “Surprises are foolish things. The pleasure is not enhanced, and the inconvenience is often considerable.” — Jane Austen, Emma

Jane Austen Quotes About Friendship and Loyalty

• “There is nothing I would not do for those who are really my friends. I have no notion of loving people by halves, it is not my nature.” — Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey
• “Friendship is certainly the finest balm for the pangs of disappointed love.” — Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey
• “There is nothing so bad as parting with one’s friends. One seems too forlorn without them.” — Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
• “General benevolence, but not general friendship, make a man what he ought to be.” — Jane Austen, Emma
• “My idea of good company is the company of clever, well-informed people who have a great deal of conversation; that is what I call good company.” — Jane Austen, Persuasion
• “There is something so amiable in the prejudices of a young mind, that one is sorry to see them give way to the reception of more general opinions.” — Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility
• “She felt that she could so much more depend upon the sincerity of those who sometimes looked or said a careless or a hasty thing, than of those whose presence of mind never varied.” — Jane Austen, Persuasion
• “It is not everyone who has your passion for dead leaves.” — Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility
• “We are each of an unsocial, taciturn disposition, unwilling to speak, unless we expect to say something that will amaze the whole room.” — Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
• “Business, you know, may bring money, but friendship hardly ever does.” — Jane Austen, Letters
• “It is so delightful to have an evening now and then to oneself.” — Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey
• “If a rainy morning deprived them of other enjoyments, they were still resolute in meeting in defiance of wet and dirt.” — Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey

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Funny and Witty Jane Austen Quotes

• “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.” — Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
• “Don’t keep coughing so, Kitty, for heaven’s sake! Have a little compassion on my nerves. You tear them to pieces.” — Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
• “Kitty has no discretion in her coughs,” said her father; “she times them ill.” — Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
• “Come, Darcy, I must have you dance. I hate to see you standing about by yourself in this stupid manner.” — Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
• “You had better return to your partner and enjoy her smiles, for you are wasting your time with me.” — Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
• “It’s been many years since I had such an exemplary vegetable.” — Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
• “For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbors, and laugh at them in our turn?” — Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
• “From all that I can collect by your manner of talking, you must be two of the silliest girls in the country. I have suspected it some time, but I am now convinced.” — Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
• “I remember the time when I liked a red coat myself very well, and indeed so I do still at my heart.” — Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
• “If my children are silly I must hope to be always sensible of it.” — Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
• “Whatever I do is done in a hurry. If I should resolve to quit Netherfield, I should probably be off in five minutes.” — Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
• “Miss Eliza Bennet, let me persuade you to follow my example, and take a turn about the room. I assure you it is very refreshing after sitting so long in one attitude.” — Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
• “A watch is always too fast or too slow. I cannot be dictated to by a watch.” — Jane Austen, Mansfield Park
• “Now I must give one smirk and then we may be rational again.” — Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey
• “Selfishness must always be forgiven, you know, because there is no hope of a cure.” — Jane Austen, Mansfield Park
• “Silly things do cease to be silly if they are done by sensible people in an impudent way.” — Jane Austen, Emma
• “Better be without sense than misapply it as you do.” — Jane Austen, Emma
• “Vanity working on a weak head produces every sort of mischief.” — Jane Austen, Emma

Inspirational Jane Austen Quotes

• “I hate to hear you talk about all women as if they were fine ladies instead of rational creatures. None of us want to be in calm waters all our lives.” — Jane Austen, Persuasion
• “There is a stubbornness about me that never can bear to be frightened at the will of others.” — Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
• “I am only resolved to act in that manner, which will, in my own opinion, constitute my happiness.” — Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
• “Blessed with so many resources within myself the world was not necessary to me. I could do very well without it.” — Jane Austen, Emma
• “I will be calm. I will be mistress of myself.” — Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility
• “I may have lost my heart, but not my self-control.” — Jane Austen, Emma
• “Do not consider me now as an elegant female, intending to play you, but as a rational creature, speaking the truth from her heart.” — Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
• “I always deserve the best treatment, because I never put up with any other.” — Jane Austen, Emma
• “Nothing ever fatigues me, but doing what I do not like.” — Jane Austen
• “She was without any power, because she was without any desire of command over herself.” — Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility
• “There, I will stake my last like a woman of spirit. No cold prudence for me. I am not born to sit still and do nothing.” — Jane Austen, Mansfield Park
• “Wisdom is better than wit, and in the long run will certainly have the laugh on her side.” — Jane Austen, Letters
• “Time will explain.” — Jane Austen, Persuasion
• “How quick come the reasons for approving what we like.” — Jane Austen, Persuasion
• “There is one thing, Emma, which a man can always do if he chooses, and that is his duty; not by manoeuvring and finessing, but by vigour and resolution.” — Jane Austen, Emma

Jane Austen Quotes About Books and Reading

• “The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid.” — Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey
• “I declare after all there is no enjoyment like reading! How much sooner one tires of any thing than of a book!” — Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
• “But for my own part, if a book is well written, I always find it too short.” — Jane Austen
• “A person who can write a long letter with ease, cannot write ill.” — Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
• “If reading could banish the idea for even half an hour, it was something gained.” — Jane Austen, Mansfield Park
• “Let us never underestimate the power of a well-written letter.” — Jane Austen, Persuasion
• “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.” — Jane Austen, Emma
• “I am delighted with the book! I should like to spend my whole life in reading it.” — Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey
• “If a rainy morning deprived them of other enjoyments, they were still resolute in meeting to read novels together.” — Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey
• “Composition seems to me impossible with a head full of joints of mutton and doses of rhubarb.” — Jane Austen, Letters

Short Jane Austen Quotes

• “Till this moment I never knew myself.” — Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
• “Angry people are not always wise.” — Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
• “What are men to rocks and mountains?” — Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
• “Time will explain.” — Jane Austen, Persuasion
• “Beware how you give your heart.” — Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey
• “What strange creatures brothers are!” — Jane Austen
• “There is no charm equal to tenderness of heart.” — Jane Austen
• “I have not the pleasure of understanding you.” — Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
• “The distance is nothing when one has motive.” — Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
• “I cannot speak well enough to be unintelligible.” — Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey
• “Their eyes instantly met, and the cheeks of both were overspread with the deepest blush.” — Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
• “Every moment had its pleasure and its hope.” — Jane Austen, Mansfield Park
• “Strange things may be generally accounted for if their cause be fairly searched out.” — Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey
• “I hate having things left to the last.” — Jane Austen, Letters
• “Without music, life would be a blank to me.” — Jane Austen, Emma
• “Think only of the past as its remembrance gives you pleasure.” — Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
• “One half of the world cannot understand the pleasures of the other.” — Jane Austen, Emma
• “It is happy for you that you possess the talent of flattering with delicacy.” — Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

Jane Austen Quotes From Her Letters

• “I do not want people to be very agreeable, as it saves me the trouble of liking them a great deal.” — Jane Austen, Letters
• “Business, you know, may bring money, but friendship hardly ever does.” — Jane Austen, Letters
• “Wisdom is better than wit, and in the long run will certainly have the laugh on her side.” — Jane Austen, Letters
• “Pictures of perfection as you know make me sick and wicked.” — Jane Austen, Letters
• “Composition seems to me impossible with a head full of joints of mutton and doses of rhubarb.” — Jane Austen, Letters
• “I hate having things left to the last.” — Jane Austen, Letters
• “Single women have a dreadful propensity for being poor, which is one very strong argument in favor of matrimony.” — Jane Austen, Letters

Jane Austen Quotes on Marriage and Family

• “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.” — Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
• “Happiness in marriage is entirely a matter of chance.” — Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
• “Do anything rather than marry without affection.” — Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
• “In nine cases out of ten, a woman had better show more affection than she feels.” — Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
• “If a woman conceals her affection with the same skill from the object of it, she may lose the opportunity of fixing him.” — Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
• “I wish Jane success with all my heart; and if she were married to him tomorrow, I should think she had as good a chance of happiness, as if she were to be studying his character for a twelvemonth.” — Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
• “Men of sense, whatever you may choose to say, do not want silly wives.” — Jane Austen, Emma
• “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.” — Jane Austen, Emma
• “I do not like to boast of my own child, but to be sure, Jane, one does not often see anybody better looking.” — Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
• “When any two young people take it into their heads to marry, they are pretty sure by perseverance to carry their point.” — Jane Austen, Persuasion
• “I am not now to learn that it is usual with young ladies to reject the addresses of the man whom they secretly mean to accept, when he first applies for their favour.” — Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
• “I have an excessive regard for Jane Bennet, she is really a very sweet girl, and I wish with all my heart she were well settled.” — Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
• “Single women have a dreadful propensity for being poor, which is one very strong argument in favor of matrimony.” — Jane Austen, Letters
• “I lay it down as a general rule, that if a woman doubts as to whether she should accept a man or not, she certainly ought to refuse him.” — Jane Austen, Emma
• “There will be little rubs and disappointments everywhere, and we are all apt to expect too much; but then, if one scheme of happiness fails, human nature turns to another.” — Jane Austen, Mansfield Park

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FAQ’s About Jane Austen Quotes

What is Jane Austen’s most famous quote?

Her most famous line is the opening of Pride and Prejudice: “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.”

What did Jane Austen say about love?

She wrote many lines on love, including “You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope…I have loved none but you” from Persuasion.

What is Jane Austen’s quote about staying home?

In Emma, she wrote, “There is nothing like staying at home, for real comfort.”

Which Jane Austen novel has the most quotable lines?

Pride and Prejudice is widely seen as her most quotable novel due to its sharp dialogue and wit.

What are some short, inspirational Jane Austen quotes?

Short options include “Till this moment I never knew myself” and “Angry people are not always wise.”

Did Jane Austen write about friendship?

Yes, she wrote often about friendship, including “Friendship is certainly the finest balm for the pangs of disappointed love.”

Are Jane Austen’s letters a good source of quotes?

Yes, her personal letters reveal a sharper, more candid wit than her novels often show.

What is a good Jane Austen quote for a wedding speech?

Captain Wentworth’s letter in Persuasion, “You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope,” works well for weddings.

Final Thoughts

Jane Austen’s words on love, family, and human nature still feel true today. Her novels and letters show a writer who understood people deeply. These 170+ quotes offer something for every reader, in every mood.

Oliver Sinclair

I’m Oliver Sinclair, founder of NarcissistQuote.com. I’m passionate about sharing narcissist quotes, healing quotes, and inspirational words that help people find strength, rebuild confidence, and move forward.