Jane Austen's popular quotations and words of praise.

An adaption was made in a TV Series (1995), directed by Simon Langton.
[Jennifer Ehle as Elizabeth Bennet — Colin Firth as Darcy]

Pride and Prejudice comes in three volumes.
It is her most popular and widely translated work.

Her works remain timeless —Austen's language is fresh and witty and to read her characters is to
wonder what the author herself was like. I have read and saw the mini series several times, and yet, I still manage to feel exhilarated, amused and stimulated every time. Truly amazing.
Pride and Prejudice is indeed a true work of art.

Austen's popularity is revealed by some of the greatest — from royalty, writers to critics:

* The Prince of Wales kept specially bound sets of her novels in each of his estates.

* Tennyson is reported to have said: "Miss Austen understood the smallness of life to perfection. She was a great artist, equal in her small sphere to Shakespeare..." That remark became so widely circulated that Tennyson thought to explain himself: "I am reported to have said that Jane Austen was equal to Shakespeare. What I really said was that, in the narrow sphere of life which she delineated, she pictured her characters as truthfully as Shakespeare. But Austen is to Shakespeare as asteroid to sun. Miss Austen's novels are perfect works on small scale — beautiful bits of stippling." - Alfred Tennyson, 1870

"That young lady has a talent for describing the involvements and feelings and characters of ordinary life which is to me the most wonderful thing I ever met with." -Sir Walter Scott

"Nothing very much happens in her books, and yet, when you come to the bottom of a page, you eagerly turn it to learn what will happen next. Nothing very much does and again you eagerly turn the page. The novelist who has the power to achieve this has the most precious gift a novelist can possess." - Somerset Maugham

"Jane Austen can in fact get more drama out of morality than most other writers can get from shipwreck, battle, murder, or mayhem." - Ronald Blythe

"The great English novelists are Jane Austen, George Eliot, Henry James and Joseph Conrad." - F. R. Leavis

Henry, Jane Austen's brother, portrayed his sister in this light while preparing the inscription on her gravestone:

"The benevolence of her heart, the sweetness of her temper, and the extraordinary endowments of her mind obtained the regard of all who knew her and the warmest love of her intimate connections.

Their grief is in proportion to their affection. They know their loss to be irreparable, but in their deepest affliction they are consoled by a firm though humble hope that her charity; devotion, faith and purity have rendered her soul acceptable in the sight of her R E D E E M E R."

Jane Austen's Quotations from her novels and letters ~

- "It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife."

- "But Shakespeare one gets acquainted with without knowing how. It is a part of an Englishman's constitution. His thoughts and beauties are so spread abroad that one touches them everywhere; one is intimate with him by instinct."

- "Where an opinion is general, it is usually correct. Everything nourishes what is strong already."

- "I think I may boast myself to be, with all possible vanity, the most unlearned and uninformed female who ever dared to be an authoress."

- "Nothing is more deceitful than the appearance of humility. It is often only carelessness of opinion, and sometimes an indirect boast."

- "A person who can write a long letter with ease, cannot write ill."

- "Where an opinion is general, it is usually correct."

- "Those who do not complain are never pitied."

- "One half of the world cannot understand the pleasures of the other."

- "I do not want people to be agreeable, as it saves me that trouble of liking them."

- "Happiness in marriage is entirely a matter of chance."

- "One cannot be always laughing at a man without now and then stumbling on something witty."

- "The quarrels of popes and kings, with wars and pestilences in every page;
the men all so good for nothing, and hardly any women at all — it is very tiresome."

- "Human nature is so well disposed towards those who are in interesting situations,
that a young person, who either marries or dies, is sure to be kindly spoken of."

- "I always find that the most effectual mode of getting rid of temptation is to give way to it."

- "I... do not think the worse of him for having a brain so very different from mine. ... And he deserves better treatment than to be obliged to read any more of my works."

- "Expect a most agreeable letter, for not being overburdened with subject (having nothing at all to say), I shall have no check to my genius from beginning to end."

- "One does not love a place the less for having suffered in it unless it has all been suffering, nothing but suffering...."

- "Friendship is the finest balm for the pangs of despised love...."

- "A large income is the best recipe for happiness I ever heard of."

- "Where so many hours have been spent in convincing myself that I am right, is there not some reason to fear I may be wrong?"

- "I cannot think well of a man who sports with any woman's feelings; and there may often be a great deal more suffered than a stander-by can judge of."

- "Nothing amuses me more than the easy manner with which everybody settles the abundance of those who have a great deal less than themselves."

- "The enthusiasm of a woman's love is even beyond the biographer's."

- "In every power, of which taste is the foundation, excellence is pretty fairly divided among the sexes."

- "You have delighted us long enough."

- "For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbors, and laugh at them in our turn?"

- "One half of the world cannot understand the pleasures of the other."

- "There is safety in reserve, but no attraction. One cannot love a reserved person."

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