top of page
Exlpore more Being quotes

"Great is the difference betwixt a man's being frightened at, and humbled for his sins."

"It may be hard for an egg to turn into a bird: it would be a jolly sight harder for it to learn to fly while remaining an egg. We are like eggs at present. And you cannot go on indefinitely being just an ordinary, decent egg. We must be hatched or go bad."

"The years between fifty and seventy are the hardest. You are always being asked to do things, and yet you are not decrepit enough to turn them down."

"The nobility of a human being is strictly independent of that of his convictions."

"To be trusted is a greater compliment than being loved."

"The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself."

"And they write innumerable books; being too vain and distracted for silence: seeking every one after his own elevation, and dodging his emptiness."
Explore more quotes by Jane Austen

"Books-oh! no. I am sure we never read the same, or not with the samefeelings.""I am sorry you think so; but if that be the case, there can at least beno want of subject. We may compare our different opinions."

"However, he wrote some verses on her, and very pretty they were. "And so ended his affection," said Elizabeth impatiently. "There has been many a one, I fancy, overcome in the same way. I wonder who first discovered the efficacy of poetry in driving away love! "I have been used to consider poetry as the food of love," said Darcy. "Of a fine, stout, healthy love it may. Everything nourishes what is strong already. But if it be only a slight, thin sort of inclination, I am convinced that one good sonnet will starve it entirely away."

"Oh! you are a great deal too apt, you know, to like people in general. You never see fault in any body. All the world are good and agreeable in your eyes. I never heard you speak ill of a human being in my life.""I would wish not to be hasty in censuring any one; but I always speak what I think."

"When I look out on such a night as this, I feel as if there could be neither wickedness nor sorrow in the world; and there certainly would be less of both if the sublimity of Nature were more attended to, and people were carried more out of themselves by contemplating such a scene."

"Every line, every word was - in the hackneyed metaphor which their dear writer, were she here, would forbid - a dagger to my heart. To know that Marianne was in town was - in the same language - a thunderbolt. - Thunderbolts and daggers! - what a reproof would she have given me! - her taste, her opinions - I believe they are better known to me than my own, - and I am sure they are dearer."
bottom of page