Browse 7 quotations connecting Jane Austen with Life, with meanings, source notes and related themes.
Each quotation is included because its central idea connects with this theme, not simply because one matching word appears in the sentence.
Sources represented here include Pride and Prejudice, Persuasion, Mansfield Park. Keeping the work and source note beside each quotation makes differences in setting, speaker and emphasis easier to see.
Sources represented here include Pride and Prejudice, Persuasion, Mansfield Park.
“We have all a better guide in ourselves, if we would attend to it, than any other person can be.”
Inner judgment can be more reliable than social pressure when a person has reflected carefully and understands the circumstances firsthand.
Source note: The novel contrasts outside pressure with the value of attending to one’s own judgment.
“I must learn to brook being happier than I deserve.”
The line combines joy with humility: Wentworth recognizes that his renewed happiness exceeds what his earlier pride and mistakes make him feel he has earned.
Source note: Persuasion, Chapter XXIII.
“She had been forced into prudence in her youth, she learned romance as she grew older: the natural sequel of an unnatural beginning.”
The narrator summarizes Anne’s development as a reversal: excessive caution shaped her early choice, while experience later teaches her to value warmer confidence and attachment.
Source note: Persuasion, Chapter IV, Project Gutenberg #105. This is narrator commentary after Anne reconsiders the engagement she ended at nineteen under Lady Russell’s persuasion.
“Angry people are not always wise.”
Strong emotion can narrow judgment, so being certain while angry is not the same as being correct.
Source note: Pride and Prejudice; the line is preserved in the novel’s dialogue about anger, judgment, and the limits of certainty while emotions are high.
“I declare after all there is no enjoyment like reading!”
The line is memorable as praise of reading, though its comic context matters because Miss Bingley says it while performing interest for Darcy.
Source note: Pride and Prejudice, Chapter 11; context is ironic.
“For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbours, and laugh at them in our turn?”
Mr. Bennet’s joke treats social observation as reciprocal: everyone is somebody else’s entertainment, including the people doing the laughing.
Source note: Pride and Prejudice, Chapter 57; Mr. Bennet comments on the absurd rumour concerning Elizabeth and Darcy.
“Know your own happiness. You want nothing but patience—or give it a more fascinating name: call it hope.”
Happiness can depend less on dramatic change than on recognizing what is already possible and waiting without giving up.
Source note: Sense and Sensibility.