Skip to content

A single woman, with a very narrow income, must be a ridiculous, disagreeable, old maid! the proper sport of boys and girls; but a single woman, of good fortune, is always respectable, and may be as sensible and pleasant as anybody else.

— Jane Austen Emma (1815)

Another quote →

Topics

Women

More quotes by Jane Austen

Where an opinion is general, it is usually correct.

There is nothing I would not do for those who are really my friends. I have no notion of loving people by halves, it is not my nature.

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

Pride and Prejudice (1813)

But disguise of every sort is my abhorrence.

Pride and Prejudice (1813)

The sooner every party breaks up the better.

Emma (1815)

All Jane Austen quotes →

You may also like

The worker is the slave of capitalist society, the female worker is the slave of that slave.

James Connolly

There is a Lady sweet and kind,
Was never face so pleased my mind;
I did but see her passing by,
And yet I love her till I die.

Thomas Ford

To call woman the weaker sex is a libel; it is man's injustice to woman.

Mahatma Gandhi

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men and women are created equal.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Jane Austen (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.