Jane Austen Quotes on Man (41 Quotes)



    So you and I are to be left to shift by ourselves, with this poor sick child; and not a creature coming near us all the evening! I knew how it would be. This is always my luck. If there is anything disagreeable going on men are always sure to get out of it, and Charles is as bad as any of them.

    A man who has been refused! How could I ever be foolish enough to expect a renewal of his love? Is there one among the sex, who would not protest against such a weakness as a second proposal to the same woman? There is no indignity so abhorrent to their feelings!

    Having never fancied herself in love before, her regard had all the warmth of first attachment, and from her age and disposition, greater steadiness than first attachments often boast; and so fervently did she value his remembrance, and prefer him to every other man, that all her good sense, and all her attention to the feelings of her friends, were requisite to check the indulgence of those regrets, which must have been injurious to her own health and their tranquility.




    A young woman, if she fall into bad gands, may be teazed, and kept at a distance from those she wants to be with; but one cannot comprehend a young man's being under such restraint, as not to be able to spend a week with his father, if he likes it.

    If you were to give me forty such men, I never could be so happy as you. Till I have your disposition, your goodness, I never can have your happiness. No, no, let me shift for myself; and, perhaps, if I have very good luck, I may meet with another Mr. Collins in time.

    It has sunk him, I cannot say how much it has sunk him in my opinion. So unlike what a man should be!-None of that upright integrity, that strict adherence to truth and principle, that distain of trick and littleness, which a man should display in every transaction of his life.

    Oh! if that is all, I have a very poor opinion of young men who live in Derbyshire; and their intimate friends who live in Hertfordshire are not much better. I am sick of them all. Thank Heaven! I am going tommorow where I shall find a man who has not one agreeable quality, who has neither manner nor sense to recommend him. Stupid men are the only ones worth knowing, after all.

    Men of sense, whatever you may choose to say, do not want silly wives.

    Oh! Single, my dear, to be sure! A single man of large fortune; four or five thousand a year. What a fine thing for our girls!

    The most incomprehensible thing in the world to a man, is a woman who rejects his offer of marriage!

    She began now to comprehend that he was exactly the man who, in disposition and talents, would most suit her. His understanding and temper, though unlike her own, would have answered all her wishes. It was an union that must have been to the advantage of both: by her ease and liveliness, his mind might have been softened, his manners improved; and from his judgement, information, and knowledge of the world, she must have received benefit of greater importance.

    There is one thing, Emma, which a man can always do if he chooses, and that is his duty; not by manoeuvring and finessing, but by vigour and resolution. - Mr. Knightley

    The wisest and the best of men, nay, the wisest and best of their actions, may be rendered ridiculous by a person whose first object in life is a joke.

    Shall I ask you how the church is to be filled, if a man is neither to take orders with a living, nor without?


    But Catherine did not know her own advantages - did not know that a good-looking girl, with an affectionate heart and a very ignorant mind, cannot fail of attracting a clever young man, unless circumstances are particularly untoward.

    Why, my dear, you must know, Mrs. Long says that Netherfield is taken by a young man of large fortune from the north of England; that he came down on Monday in a chaise and four to see the place, and was so much delighted with it, that he agreed with Mr. Morris immediately; that he is to take possession before Michaelmas, and some of his servants are to be in the house by the end of next week.

    The advantages of natural folly in a beautiful girl have been already set forth by the capital pen of a sister author; and to her treatment of the subject I will only add, in justice to men, that though to the larger and more trifling part of the sex, imbecility in females is a great enhancement of their personal charms, there is a portion of them too reasonable and too well informed themselves to desire anything more in woman than ignorance.

    Without thinking highly either of men or of matrimony, marriage had always been her object; it was the only honourable provision for well-educated young women of small fortune, and however uncertain of giving happiness, must be their pleasantest preservative from want.

    A man does not recover from such devotion of the heart to such a woman! He ought not; he does not.


    How she might have felt had there been no Captain Wentworth in the case, was not worth enquiry; for there was a Captain Wentworth: and be the conclusion of the present suspense good or bad, her affection would be his forever. Their union, she believed, could not divide her more from other men, than their final separation.

    I do not dislike him. I consider him, on the contrary, as a very respectable man, who has everybody's good word and nobody's notice…

    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.

    The more I know of the world, the more I am convinced that I shall never see a man whom I can really love.

    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 will not allow books to prove anything.

    Every man is surrounded by a neighborhood of voluntary spies.

    It is always incomprehensible to a man that a woman should ever refuse an offer of marriage.

    Woman is fine for her own satisfaction alone. No man will admire her the more, no woman will like her the better for it. Neatness and fashion are enough for the former, and a something of shabbiness or impropriety will be most endearing to the latter.

    Good-humoured, unaffected girls, will not do for a man who has been used to sensible women. They are two distinct orders of being.

    One cannot be always laughing at a man without now and then stumbling on something witty.

    Mr. Collins was not a sensible man, and the deficiency of nature had been but little assisted by education or society . . .

    The gentleness, modesty, and sweetness of her character were warmly expatiated on that sweetness which makes so essential a part of every woman's worth in the judgment of man, that though he sometimes loves where it is not, he can never believe it absent.

    But history, real solemn history, I cannot be interested in.... I read it a little as a duty, but it tells me nothing that does not either vex or weary me. The quarrels of popes and kings, with wars or pestilences, in every page the men all so good for nothing, and hardly any women at all it is very tiresome.

    Real solemn history, I cannot be interested in . . . The quarrels of popes and kings, with wars or pestilences in every page the men all so good for nothing, and hardly any women at all.

    General benevolence, but not general friendship, made a man what he ought to be.

    If there is anything disagreeable going on, men are sure to get out of it.

    No man is offended by another man's admiration of the woman he loves; it is the woman only who can make it a torment.


    More Jane Austen Quotations (Based on Topics)


    Man - Woman - World - Love - Happiness - Pleasure - Mind - Sense & Perception - Life - Friendship - Wisdom & Knowledge - Opinions - Emotions - Time - Sadness - Fate & Destiny - Manner - Education - Anger - View All Jane Austen Quotations

    More Jane Austen Quotations (By Book Titles)


    - Emma
    - Mansfield Park
    - Northanger Abbey
    - Persuasion
    - Pride and Prejudice
    - Sense and Sensibility

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