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I . . . am always half afraid of finding a clever novel too clever--& of finding my own story & my own people all forestalled.

Jane Austen

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Jane Austen
Age: 101 †
Born: 1775
Born: December 16
Died: 1877
Died: July 24
Novelist
Short Story Writer
Writer
Steventon
Hampshire
People
Findings
Finding
Afraid
Novel
Story
Half
Stories
Always
Clever

More quotes by Jane Austen

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Whom are you going to dance with?' asked Mr. Knightley. She hesitated a moment and then replied, 'With you, if you will ask me.' Will you?' said he, offering his hand. Indeed I will. You have shown that you can dance, and you know we are not really so much brother and sister as to make it at all improper.' Brother and sister! no, indeed.
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Every man is surrounded by a neighborhood of voluntary spies.
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I will not allow it to be more man's nature than woman's to be inconstant.
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I am come, young ladies, in a very moralizing strain, to observe that our pleasures of this world are always to be for, and that we often purchase them at a great disadvantage, giving readi-monied actual happiness for a draft on the future, that may not be honoured.
Jane Austen
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Pity is for this life, pity is the worm inside the meat, pity is the meat, pity is the shaking pencil, pity is the shaking voice-- not enough money, not enough love--pity for all of us--it is our grace, walking down the ramp or on the moving sidewalk, sitting in a chair, reading the paper, pity, turning a leaf to the light, arranging a thorn.
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...when pain is over, the remembrance of it often becomes a pleasure.
Jane Austen
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I have had to contend against the unkindness of his sister, and the insolence of his mother and have suffered the punishment of an attachment, without enjoying its advantages.
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You ought certainly to forgive them as a Christian, but never to admit them in your sight, or allow their names to be mentioned in your hearing.
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But if I were you, I would stand by the nephew. He has more to give.
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An unhappy alternative is before you, Elizabeth. From this day you must be a stranger to one of your parents. Your mother will never see you again if you do not marry Mr. Collins, and I will never see you again if you do.
Jane Austen
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It is not every man's fate to marry the woman who loves him best
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I begin already to weigh my words and sentences more than I did, and am looking about for a sentiment, an illustration, or a metaphor in every corner of the room. Could my Ideas flow as fast as the rain in the Storecloset it would be charming.
Jane Austen
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The little bit (two inches wide) of ivory on which I work with so fine a brush as produces little effect after much labour.
Jane Austen
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If I had ever learnt, I should have been a great proficient.
Jane Austen
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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
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My good qualities are under your protection, and you are to exaggerate them as much as possible and, in return, it belongs to me to find occasion for teasing and quarreling with you as often as may be.
Jane Austen
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Without thinking highly either of men or of matrimony, marriage had always been her object it was the only honourable provision for well-educated young women of small fortune, and however uncertain of giving happiness, must be their pleasantest preservative from want.
Jane Austen
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And to all this she must yet add something more substantial, in the improvement of her mind by extensive reading.
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Arguments are too much like disputes.
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Where people are really attached, poverty itself is wealth.
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