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Persuasion is Jane Austen’s last completed novel, written in 1816 and published after she passed away in 1817.
It’s connected to Northanger Abbey since both are partly set in Bath, a city Austen knew well (though she didn’t love her time there).
The story digs into themes like persuasion, the social scene in Bath, and the Royal Navy – something personal to Austen, as two of her brothers were admirals.
It feels a bit different from her earlier books, with sharper humor and a heroine, Anne Elliot, who starts off feeling pretty regretful about her life.
But by the end, it’s about finding hope and living a more fulfilling life.
In this post, I’m sharing the best quotes from Persuasion that really capture the heart of the story and anyone would enjoy.
Grab Your Copy of Persuasion by Jane Austen
1. “How quick come the reasons for approving what we like.”
2. “There could have been no two hearts so open, no tastes so similar, no feelings so in unison.”
3. “It would be most right, and most wise, and, therefore must involve least suffering.”
4. “Neither the dissipations of the past–and she had lived very much in the world, nor the restrictions of the present; neither sickness nor sorrow seemed to have closed her heart or ruined her spirits.”
5. “I never saw quite so wretched an example of what a sea-faring life can do: but to a degree, I know it is the same with them all; they are all knocked about, and exposed to every climate, and every weather, till they are not fit to be seen. It is a pity they are not knocked on the head at once, before they reach Admiral Baldwin’s age.”
6. “Your countenance perfectly informs me that you were in company last night with the person, whom you think the most agreeable in the world, the person who interests you at this present time, more than all the rest of the world put together.”
7. “Unjust I may have been, weak and resentful I have been, but never inconstant.”
8. “One man’s ways may be as good as another’s, but we all like our own best.”
9. “She would have liked to know how he felt as to a meeting. Perhaps indifferent, if indifference could exist under such circumstances. He must be either indifferent or unwilling.”
10. “If I was wrong in yielding to persuasion once, remember that it was to persuasion exerted on the side of safety, not of risk.”
11. “She had been forced into prudence in her youth, she learned romance as she grew older: the natural sequel of an unnatural beginning.”
12. “My idea of good company…is the company of clever, well-informed people, who have a great deal of conversation; that is what I call good company.”
13. “The last few hours were certainly very painful,” replied Anne: “but when pain is over, the remembrance of it often becomes a pleasure. One does not love a place the less for having suffered in it, unless it has been all suffering, nothing but suffering.”
14. “She knew that when she played she was giving pleasure only to herself; but this was no new sensation.”
15. “Dare not say that man forgets sooner than woman, that his love has an earlier death.”
16. “When the evening was over, Anne could not be amused…nor could she help fearing, on more serious reflection, that, like many other great moralists and preachers, she had been eloquent on a point in which her own conduct would ill bear examination.”
17. “All the overpowering blinding, bewildering, first effects of strong surprise were over with her. Still, however, she had enough to feel! It was agitation, pain, pleasure, a something between delight and misery.”
18. “I do not think I ever opened a book in my life which had not something to say upon woman’s inconstancy. Songs and proverbs, all talk of woman’s fickleness. But perhaps you will say, these were all written by men.”
19. “She hoped to be wise and reasonable in time; but alas! Alas! She must confess to herself that she was not wise yet.”
20. “There, he had learnt to distinguish between the steadiness of principle and the obstinacy of self-will, between the darings of heedlessness and the resolution of a collected mind.”
Grab Your Copy of Persuasion by Jane Austen
21. “Facts or opinions which are to pass through the hands of so many, to be misconceived by folly in one, and ignorance in another, can hardly have much truth left.”
22. “We live at home, quiet, confined, and our feelings prey upon us.”
23. “I hate to hear you talk about all women as if they were fine ladies instead of rational creatures. None of us want to be in calm waters all our lives.”
24. “A man does not recover from such devotion of the heart to such a woman! He ought not; he does not.”
25. “She felt that she could so much more depend upon the sincerity of those who sometimes looked or said a careless or a hasty thing, than of those whose presence of mind never varied, whose tongue never slipped.”
26. “An interval of meditation, serious and grateful, was the best corrective of everything dangerous.”
27. “Men have had every advantage of us in telling their own story. Education has been theirs in so much higher a degree; the pen has been in their hands. I will not allow books to prove anything.”
28. “Thus much indeed he was obliged to acknowledge – that he had been constant unconsciously, nay unintentionally; that he had meant to forget her, and believed it to be done. He had imagined himself indifferent, when he had only been angry; and he had been unjust to her merits, because he had been a sufferer from them.”
29. “Woe betide him, and her too, when it comes to things of consequence, when they are placed in circumstances requiring fortitude and strength of mind, if she have not resolution enough to resist idle interference.”
30. “All the privilege I claim for my own sex (it is not a very enviable one: you need not covet it), is that of loving longest, when existence or when hope is gone.”
31. “The evening ended with dancing. On its being proposed, Anne offered her services, as usual, and though her eyes would sometimes fill with tears as she sat at the instrument, she was extremely glad to be employed, and desired nothing in return but to be unobserved.”
32. “I frequently observe that one pretty face would be followed by five and thirty frights.”
33. “The one claim I shall make for my own sex is that we love longest, when all hope is gone.”
34. “A lady, without a family, was the very best preserver of furniture in the world.”
35. “A persuadable temper might sometimes be as much in favor of happiness, as a very resolute character.”
36. “There, he had seen every thing to exalt in his estimation the woman he had lost, and there begun to deplore the pride, the folly, the madness of resentment, which had kept him from trying to regain her when thrown in his way.”
37. “It would be difficult to say which had seen highest perfection in the other, or which had been the happiest: she, in receiving his declarations and proposals, or he in having them accepted.”
38. “His cold politeness, his ceremonious grace, were worse than anything.”
39. “I am not fond of the idea of my shrubberies being always approachable.”
40. “If there is any thing disagreeable going on, men are always sure to get out of it.”
41. “You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope…I have loved none but you. Tell me not that I am too late, that such precious feelings are gone for ever. I offer myself to you again with a heart even more your own than when you almost broke it, eight years and a half ago.”
42. “A submissive spirit might be patient, a strong understanding would supply resolution, but here was something more; here was that elasticity of mind, that disposition to be comforted, that power of turning readily from evil to good, and of finding employment which carried her out of herself, which was from nature alone.”
43. “She was persuasion itself: but the word was blunted in its passage through many years.”
44. “When any two young people take it into their heads to marry, they are pretty sure by perseverance to carry their point, be they ever so poor, or ever so imprudent, or ever so little likely to be necessary to each other’s ultimate comfort.”
45. “She played in such a way that even those who did not care for music could not but listen.”
Grab Your Copy of Persuasion by Jane Austen
If you enjoyed these quotes, make sure to check out the related posts on other classic Austen works.
And feel free to share your thoughts or favorite quotes in the comments below.
I’d love to hear what resonates most with you.
