What did Jane Austen Think About...

The Wisdom of Jane Austen, edited by Shawna Mulen, deconstructs all of Austen's works to glean and collate quotes by topic. Arranged alphabetically, the topics start at Accomplishment, end with Youthful Folly, and make forays into such wide-ranging ones as, Constancy, Dashed Hopes (very separate from Depression and Despair), Freckles, Isipidness, and Lucky Guess. The book covers 326 of them in all. Here are a few examples...

Qualities in a Man
I could not be happy with a man whose taste did not in every point coincide with my own. He must enter into all my feelings; the same books, the same music must charm us both.
—Marianne Dashwood, "Sense & Sensibility"

Marriage and Greed
What is the difference in matrimonial affairs, between the mercenary and the prudent motive? Where does discretion end and avarice begin?
—Elizabeth Bennett, "Pride & Prejudice"

Ill Disposition
He was not an ill-disposed young man, unless to be rather cold hearted and rather selfish is to be ill-disposed.
—"Sense & Sensibility"

Doing Without Dancing
It may be possible to do without dancing entirely. Instances have been known of young people passng many, many months successively, without being at any ball of any description, and no material injury accrue to any body or mind;—but when a beginning in 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.
—"Emma"

Morals
We do not look in great cities for our best morality.
—Edmund Bertram, "Mansfield Park"

Age
But seven years are, I suppose, enough to change every pore of one's skin and every feeling of one's mind.
—"Jane Austen's Letters"
The older a person grows, Harriet, the more important it is that their manners should not be bad; the more glaring and disgusting any loudness, or coarseness, or awkwardness becomes. What is passable in youth is detestable in later age.
—Emma Woodhouse, "Emma"