Read the best Mansfield Park quotes by Jane Austen to indulge in some of her most famous quotes about love, marriage, social class, reading, and more.
In Mansfield Park, Austen’s third novel, protagonist Fanny Price is a simple and quiet heroine compared to all of Jane Austen’s novels. This story follows her as she comes of age at the home of her wealthy aunt, uncle, and cousins.
Like many of Austen’s novels, love, family, and society intersect. But, this one also has a scandalous affair bearing consequences and choices of moral integrity.
Besides Fanny Price, you’ll also hear from characters like Mary Crawford, Henry Crawford, Edmund Bertram, and more.
Below are all the best quotes from Mansfield Park by Jane Austen.
Mansfield Park Quotes
“This would be the way to Fanny’s heart. She was not to be won by all that gallantry and wit and good-nature together could do; or, at least, she would not be won by them nearly so soon, without the assistance of sentiment and feeling, and seriousness on serious subjects.”
“There will be little rubs and disappointments everywhere, and we are all apt to expect too much; but then, if one scheme of happiness fails, human nature turns to another; if the first calculation is wrong, we make a second better: we find comfort somewhere.”
“Selfishness must always be forgiven, you know, because there is no hope of a cure.”
“I was so anxious to do what is right that I forgot to do what is right.”
“But indeed I would rather have nothing but tea.”
“[N]obody minds having what is too good for them.”
“Everybody likes to go their own way—to choose their own time and manner of devotion.”
“I was quiet, but I was not blind.”
“Human nature needs more lessons than a weekly sermon can convey.”
“There is nothing like employment, active indispensable employment, for relieving sorrow. Employment, even melancholy, may dispel melancholy.”
“Those who have not more must be satisfied with what they have.”
“It was a gloomy prospect, and all that she could do was to throw a mist over it, and hope when the mist cleared away, she should see something else.”
“If any one faculty of our nature may be called more wonderful than the rest, I do think it is memory. There seems something more speakingly incomprehensible in the powers, the failures, the inequalities of memory, than in any other of our intelligences.”
“There is no reason in the world why you should not be important where you are known. You have good sense, and a sweet temper, and I am sure you have a grateful heart, that could never receive kindness without hoping to return it. I do not know any better qualifications for a friend and companion.”
“I do not pretend to set people right, but I do see that they are often wrong.”
“But he recommended the books which charmed her leisure hours, he encouraged her taste, and corrected her judgment; he made reading useful by talking to her of what she read, and heightened its attraction by judicious praise.”
“I am worn out with civility.”
“He was in love, very much in love; and it was a love which, operating on an active, sanguine spirit, of more warmth than delicacy, made her affection appear of greater consequence, because it was withheld, and determined him to have the glory, as well as the felicity of forcing her to love him.”
“Of course I love her, but there are as many forms of love as there are moments in time.”
“Give a girl an education, and introduce her properly into the world.”
“We do not look in great cities for our best morality.”
“No man dies of love but on the stage[.]”
“Nobody meant to be unkind, but nobody put themselves out of their way to secure her comfort.”
“But there certainly are not so many men of large fortune in the world as there are pretty women to deserve them.”
“This was a letter to be run through eagerly, to be read deliberately, to supply matter for much reflection, and to leave everything in greater suspense than ever.”
“An engaged woman is always more agreeable than a disengaged. She is satisfied with herself. Her cares are over, and she may exert all her powers of pleasing without suspicion. All is safe with a lady engaged; no harm can be done.”
“These were reflections that required some time to soften; but time will do almost everything.”
“A fondness for reading, properly directed, must be an education in itself.”
“She was not often invited to join in the conversation of the others, nor did she desire it. Her own thoughts and reflections were habitually her best companions.”
“The season, the scene, the air, were all favorable to tenderness and sentiment.”
“Life seems nothing more than a quick succession of busy nothings.”
“When I look out on such a night as this, I feel as if there could be neither wickedness nor sorrow in the world; and there certainly would be less of both if the sublimity of Nature were more attended to, and people were carried more out of themselves by contemplating such a scene.”
“When people are waiting, they are bad judges of time, and every half minute seems like five.”
“I pay very little regard […] to what any young person says on the subject of marriage. If they profess a disinclination for it, I only set it down that they have not yet seen the right person.”
“Let us have the luxury of silence.”
“I have no talent for certainty.”
“Nothing ever fatigues me but doing what I do not like.”
“I think it ought not to be set down as certain that a man must be acceptable to every woman he may happen to like himself.”
“Run mad as often as you choose, but do not faint.”
“A large income is the best recipe for happiness I ever heard of.”
“He will make you happy, Fanny, I know he will make you happy, but you will make him everything.”
Now you know all the best Mansfield Park quotes by Jane Austen.
Buy Mansfield Park:
Related Jane Austen Quotes Posts
If you loved these Mansfield Park quotes, you will love these posts:
- Best Jane Austen Quotes About Love
- Best Quotes from Pride & Prejudice
- Best Quotes from Sense & Sensibility
- Best Quotes from Persuasion
- Best Quotes from Northanger Abbey
- Best Quotes from Emma
