Life Advice from Jane Austen

 Life Advice from Jane Austen

Who needs agony aunts and advice columns when you can turn to the laudable pages of Jane Austen for guidance? She may have died nearly three hundred years ago, but Austen's canny 1 observations on love, men, social standing 2 and even fashion still resonate in the 21st Century. Gems 3 such the recipe for a happy marriage ("a large income") and womanhood ("loss of virtue 4 in a female is irretrievable") are liberally peppered throughout her classic tomes.

With that in mind, we've dusted down the Jane Austen classics from the Stylist bookshelf and researched sayings attributed to the writer herself, for her very best words of wisdom.
Pick your favourite quote from the gallery below.
"Happiness in marriage is entirely 5 a matter of chance."
"Vanity working on a weak head, produces every sort of mischief 6."
"One cannot have too large a party."
"Know your own happiness. Want for nothing but patience - or give it a more fascinating name: Call it hope."
"The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid."
"There is no charm equal to tenderness of heart."
"Friendship is certainly the finest balm for the pangs 7 of disappointed love."
"Loss of virtue in a female is irretrievable; that one false step involves her in endless ruin."
"A large income is the best recipe for happiness I ever heard of."
"Indulge your imagination in every possible flight."
"A woman, especially if she have the misfortune of knowing anything, should conceal 8 it as well as she can."
"It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife."
"There is nothing like staying at home for real comfort."
"One man's style must not be the rule of another's."
"Single women have a dreadful propensity 9 for being poor...which is one very strong argument in favour of matrimony... "
"A lady's imagination is very rapid; it jumps from admiration 10 to love, from love to matrimony in a moment."
"For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbours, and laugh at them in our turn?"
"They are much to be pitied who have not been given a taste for nature early in life."
"One half of the world cannot understand the pleasures of the other."
"Dress is at all times a frivolous 11 distinction, and excessive solicitude 12 about it often destroys its own aim."
"Next to being married, a girl likes to be crossed in love a little now and then."
"It is very difficult for the prosperous to be humble 13."
"When a woman has five grown-up daughters, she ought to give over thinking of her own beauty."
"To sit in the shade on a fine day, and look upon verdure is the most perfect refreshment 14."
"A person who can write a long letter with ease, cannot write ill."
"To be fond of dancing was a certain step towards falling in love."
"One cannot be always laughing at a man without now and then stumbling on something witty 15."
"Every savage 16 can dance."
"Marriage is indeed a manoeuvring business."
"Give a girl an education and introduce her properly into the world, and ten to one but she has the means of settling well, without further expense to anybody."
"To look almost pretty is an acquisition of higher delight to a girl who has been looking plain the first fifteen years of her life than a beauty from her cradle can ever receive."
"Without music, life would be a blank."
"Surprises are foolish things. The pleasure is not enhanced, and the inconvenience is often considerable."
"There are as many forms of love as there are moments in time."
"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 17."