"Life seems but a quick succession of busy nothings.
With a book he was regardless of time...
More Jane Austen quotes
"A fondness for reading, properly directed, must be an education in itself.
"...And if reading could banish the idea for even half an hour, it was something gained.
"Poor woman! She probably thought change of air might agree with many of her children.
"The promised notification was hanging over her head. The postman's knock within the neighbourhood was beginning to bring its daily terrors -and if rea...
"Provided that nothing like useful knowledge could be gained from them, provided they were all story and no reflection, she had never any objection to ...
"I cannot speak well enough to be unintelligible.
"The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid.
"I am no novel-reader -- I seldom look into novels -- Do not imagine that I often read novels -- It is really very well for a novel." Such is the commo...
"...it is indeed a street of so impertinent a nature, so unfortunately connected with the great London and Oxford roads, and the principal inn of the c...
"It is only a novel... or, in short, only some work in which the greatest powers of the mind are displayed, in which the most thorough knowledge of hum...
"But history, real solemn history, I cannot be interested in. Can you?""Yes, I am fond of history.""I wish I were too. I read it a little as a duty, bu...
"To begin perfect happiness at the respective ages of twenty-six and eighteen, is to do pretty well; and professing myself moreover convinced, that the...
"Vanity was the beginning and the end of Sir Walter Elliot's character; vanity of person and of situation. He had been remarkably handsome in his youth...
"I frequently observe that one pretty face would be followed by five and thirty frights.