"A fondness for reading, properly directed, must be an education in itself.












If a book is well written, I always find it too short.

More Jane Austen quotes
"...And if reading could banish the idea for even half an hour, it was something gained.
"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 ...
"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 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...
"...I will not allow books to prove any thing.""But how shall we prove any thing?""We never shall.
"I do not think I ever opened a book in my life which had not something to say upon woman's inconstancy. Songs and proverbs, all talk of woman's fickle...
"Men have had every advantage of us in telling their own story. Education has been theirs in so much higher a degree the pen has been in their hands. I...
"How much sooner one tires of anything than of a book!
"In his library he had been always sure of leisure and tranquility; and though prepared, as he told Elizabeth, to meet with folly and conceit in every ...
"I declare after all there is no enjoyment like reading! How much sooner one tires of any thing than of a book! -- When I have a house of my own, I sha...
"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 b...