Jane Austen Quotes on Youth (7 Quotes)

Anne could not immediately fall into a quotation again. The sweet scenes of autumn were for a while put by - unless some tender sonnet, fraught with the apt analogy of the declining year, with declining happiness, and the images of youth and hope, and spring, all gone together, blessed her memory.

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.

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.

There is something so amiable in the prejudices of a young mind, that one is sorry to see them give way to the reception of more general opinions.

If any young men come for Mary or Kitty, send them in, for I am quite at leisure.

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.

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. . .