"In nine cases out of ten, a woman had better show more affection than she feels."

Austen, Jane on Affection
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"An engaged woman is always more agreeable than a disengaged. She is satisfied with herself. Her cares are over, and she feels that she may exert all her powers of pleasing without suspicion. All is safe with a lady engaged; no harm can be done."

Austen, Jane on Engagement
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"You mistake me, my dear. I have a high respect for your nerves. They are my old friends. I have heard you mention them with consideration these twenty years at least."

Austen, Jane on Fear
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"Although our productions have afforded more extensive and unaffected pleasure than those of any other literary corporation in the world, no species of composition has been so much decried. And what are you reading, Miss -- -? Oh! it is only a novel! replies the young lady; while she lays down her book with affected indifference, or momentary shame. It is only Cecilia, or Camilla, or Belinda ; or, in short, only some work in which the greatest powers of the mind are displayed, in which the most thorough knowledge of human nature, the happiest delineation of its varieties, the liveliest effusions of wit and humor, are conveyed to the world in the best chosen language."

Austen, Jane on Fiction
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"A large income is the best recipe for happiness I ever heard of."

Austen, Jane on Income
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"Human nature is so well disposed towards those who are in interesting situations, that a young person, who either marries or dies, is sure of being kindly spoken of."

Austen, Jane on Judgment and Judges
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"It is always incomprehensible to a man that a woman should ever refuse an offer of marriage."

Austen, Jane on Marriage
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"Happiness in marriage is entirely a matter of chance."

Austen, Jane on Marriage
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"With men he can be rational and unaffected, but when he has ladies to please, every feature works."

Austen, Jane on Men and Women
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"There are certainly are not so many men of large fortune in the world as there are of pretty woman to deserve them."

Austen, Jane on Men and Women
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"A woman, especially, if she have the misfortune of knowing anything, should conceal it as well as she can."

Austen, Jane on Misfortunes
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"Business, you know, may bring you money, but friendship hardly ever does."

Austen, Jane on Money
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"To sit in the shade on a fine day, and look upon verdure is the most perfect refreshment."

Austen, Jane on Nature
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"Every man is surrounded by a neighborhood of voluntary spies."

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

Austen, Jane on Neighbors
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"Where an opinion is general, it is usually correct."

Austen, Jane on Opinions
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"Why not seize the pleasure at once? How often is happiness destroyed by preparation, foolish preparation."

Austen, Jane on Opportunity
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"Let other pens dwell on guilt and misery."

Austen, Jane on Optimism
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"Nobody can tell what I suffer! But it is always so. Those who do not complain are never pitied."

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

Austen, Jane on Places
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"One half of the world cannot understand the pleasures of the other."

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

Austen, Jane on Bachelor
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"There is safety in reserve, but no attraction. One cannot love a reserved person."

Austen, Jane on Reserve
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"One cannot be always laughing at a man without now and then stumbling on something witty."

Austen, Jane on Ridicule
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"From politics it was an easy step to silence."

Austen, Jane on Silence
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"Surprises are foolish things. The pleasure is not enhanced and the inconvenience is often considerable."

Austen, Jane on Surprises
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"What dreadful hot weather we have! It keeps me in a continual state of inelegance."

Austen, Jane on Weather
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"Single women have a dreadful propensity for being poor. Which is one very strong argument in favor of matrimony."

Austen, Jane on Women
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"To look almost pretty is an acquisition of higher delight to a girl who has been looking plain for the first fifteen years of her life than a beauty from her cradle can ever receive."

Austen, Jane on Women
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"I am afraid that the pleasantness of an employment does not always evince its propriety."

Austen, Jane on Work
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"It is indolence... Indolence and love of ease; a want of all laudable ambition, of taste for good company, or of inclination to take the trouble of being agreeable, which make men clergymen. A clergyman has nothing to do but be slovenly and selfish; read the newspaper, watch the weather, and quarrel with his wife. His curate does all the work and the business of his own life is to dine."

Austen, Jane on Churches
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"It will, I believe, be everywhere found, that as the clergy are, or are not what they ought to be, so are the rest of the nation."

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"We do not look in our great cities for our best morality."

Austen, Jane on Cities and City Life
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"One has not great hopes from Birmingham. I always say there is something direful in the sound."

Austen, Jane on Cities and City Life
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"Those who do not complain are never pitied."

Austen, Jane on Complaints and Complaining
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"It may be possible to do without dancing entirely. Instances have been known of young people passing many, many months successively without being at any ball of any description, and no material injury accrue either to body or mind; but when a beginning is made -- when the felicities of rapid motion have once been, though slightly, felt -- it must be a very heavy set that does not ask for more."

Austen, Jane on Dance and Dancing
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"Affection is dezirable, but money is absolutly undispensable."

Austen, Jane on Money
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