Jane Austen

A lady's imagination is very rapid; it jumps from admiration to love, from love to matrimony in a moment. 

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

A mind lively and at ease, can do with seeing nothing, and can see nothing that does not answer. 

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

A woman, especially, if she have the misfortune of knowing anything, should conceal it as well as she can. 

An artist cannot do anything slovenly. 

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.

Business, you know, may bring you money, but friendship hardly ever does.

Dress is at all times a frivolous distinction, and excessive solicitude about it often destroys its own aim.

Every man is surrounded by a neighborhood of voluntary spies.

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

Friendship is certainly the finest balm for the pangs of disappointed love.

I am afraid that the pleasantness of an employment does not always evince its propriety. 

I cannot speak well enough to be unintelligible. 

I do not want people to be very agreeable, as it saves me the trouble of liking them a great deal.

I have been a selfish being all my life, in practice, though not in principle.

If I loved you less, I might be able to talk about it more.