17 Witty Jane Austen Quotes on Life, Love and Friendship

Jane Austen was an English author, best known for her outstanding novels Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility, and Emma.

There is little biographical information about Austen’s life. She wrote thousands of letters to her family, but her older sister, Cassandra, decided to burn or tear up most of them. Cassandra believed that it was better if Jane’s controversial comments and opinions were safeguarded from the public.

So Jane started publishing her work anonymously in her 30's. Only her family members and a few close friends knew that she was the author. Her brother, Henry, finally revealed her identity to the public after her death.

Written ‘By a Lady’, Austen’s stories often revolve around women depending on their marriage in order to attain economic stability and a desired social standing. Her combination of irony, romance and realism has earned her place among the classics we know today.

Here are 17 Jane Austen quotes to make you ponder the joys of life:

A person may be proud without being vain. Pride relates more to our opinion of ourselves, vanity to what we would have others think of us.

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.

Friendship is certainly the finest balm for the pangs of disappointed love.

Laugh as much as you choose, but you will not laugh me out of my opinion.

Give a girl an education and introduce her properly into the world, and ten to one she has the means of settling well, without further expense to anybody.

There is no charm equal to tenderness of heart.

Seldom, very seldom, does complete truth belong to any human disclosure; seldom can it happen that something is not a little disguised, or a little mistaken.

What is right to be done, cannot be done too soon.

I do not want people to be very agreeable, as it saves me the trouble of liking them a great deal.

Where an opinion is general, it is usually correct.

If I loved you less, I might be able to talk about it more.

Those who do not complain are never pitied.

There are people, who the more you do for them, the less they will do for themselves.

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!

Nobody minds having what is too good for them.

You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope… I have loved none but you!

You must learn some of my philosophy. Think only of the past as its remembrance gives you pleasure.