It amazes me how humor from over 200 years ago can still make me bust out a belly laugh. Jane Austen is truly a genius.
At the top of my head, here are a few of my favorites.
“Elinor agreed to it all, for she did not think he deserved the compliment of rational opposition.” —Sense and Sensibility
“…many were collected near them, to be useful if wanted, at any rate, to enjoy the sight of a dead young lady, nay, two dead young ladies, for it proved twice as fine as the first report.” —Persuasion
“My dear, do not give way to such gloomy thoughts. Let us hope for better things. Let us flatter ourselves that I may be the survivor.” —Pride and Prejudice
How about you?
by Charming_Act_429
44 Comments
“An unhappy alternative is before you, Elizabeth. From this day you must be a stranger to one of your parents. Your mother will never see you again if you do not marry Mr. Collins, and I will never see you again if you do.” –Mr. Bennet, *Pride and Prejudice*
​
“Human nature is so well disposed towards those who are in interesting situations, that a young person, who either marries or dies, is sure of being kindly spoken of.” –*Emma*
“If there is any thing disagreeable going on, men are always sure to get out of it.” – Mary Musgrove, *Persuasion*
That specific quote from *Sense and Sensibility* made me laugh out loud when I read it for the first time
“Elinor agreed to it all, for she did not think he deserved the compliment of rational opposition.” —Sense and Sensibility
​
OMG… there have been so many times that this exact line of thought has crossed my mind when dealing with certain people. You kind of become an expert in this dealing with very young children… but when you get to that moment with an adult human being and realize… OK…. I need to just pretend this person is 5 years old and not assume they’re capable of rational thought. I was asked at my job in customer service by a director for advice on helping others become better in de-escalation techniques since I had the best rates on the floor… I decided it probably wouldn’t be a good idea to admit that I just assumed all of our customers had the maturity level and intelligence of kindergarteners.
“Well my dear, if your daughter should have a dangerous fit of illness, if she should die, it would be a comfort to know that it was all in pursuit of Mr. Bingley, and under your orders.” -Mr. Bennet, Pride and Prejudice.
I never laugh when I read books, and this quote surprised me and made me giggle.
“Mr. Bennet, how can you abuse your own children in such a way? You take delight in vexing me. You have no compassion for my poor nerves.”
“You mistake me, my dear. I have a high respect for your nerves. They are my old friends. I have heard you mention them with consideration these last twenty years at least.”
Mr. Bennet was *chef’s kiss*
I love the great irony of Carine Bingley’s quote about reading, which was entirely fake, now being on British money.
*Miss Bingley’s attention was quite as much engaged in watching Mr. Darcy’s progress through his book, as in reading her own; and she was perpetually either making some inquiry, or looking at his page. She could not win him, however, to any conversation; he merely answered her question and read on. At length, quite exhausted by the attempt to be amused with her own book, which she had only chosen because it was the second volume of his, she gave a great yawn and said, “How pleasant it is to spend an evening in this way! **I declare, after all, there is no enjoyment like reading!** How much sooner one tires of anything than of a book! When I have a house of my own, I shall be miserable if I have not an excellent library.”*
*No one made any reply. She then yawned again, threw aside her book, and cast her eyes round the room in quest of some amusement*
Hmm: Reading all these wonderful examples, I wonder if long sentences with perfect grammar create the best kind of humor?
I did a Jane Austen English University course and honestly can remember any lines to heart.
[deleted]
Anything spoken by Mr Collins in Pride & Prejudices that involves the word condescension. He’s my favorite!
“Her teeth are tolerable”
“There are few people in England, I suppose, who have more true enjoyment of music than myself, or a better natural taste. If I had ever learnt, I should have been a great proficient.” from Lady Catherine de Bourgh in P&P.
Absolutely agree with you! The writing flows so effortlessly, the humour so smoothly inserted (I am just at this moment re-reading Persuasion for the hundredth time and this is what I’ve just come across):
“They were divided only by Mrs Musgrove. It was no insignificant barrier, indeed. Mrs Musgrove was of a comfortable, substantial size, infinitely more fitted by nature to express good cheer and good humour, than tenderness and sentiment”
Brilliant!
“People always live forever when there is an annuity to be paid them.”
Fanny, Sense and Sensibility. Love that line.
Don’t recall the specific quote but the exchange in Pride and Prejudice where Mrs. Bennet insists on Jane going horseback and not the carriage and then later when she finds out Jane got ill she does a little fistpump and goes “YES!”
‘”I admire all my three sons-in-law highly,” said he. “Wickham, perhaps, is my favourite, but I think I shall like your husband quite as well as Jane’s.”‘
-Mr Bennet, Pride and Prejudice
“He had, in fact, though his sisters were now doing all they could for him, by calling him ‘poor Richard,’ been nothing better than a thick-headed, unfeeling, unprofitable Dick Musgrove, who had never done anything to entitle himself to more than the abbreviation of his name, living or dead” — Persuasion
Not the fact that dick is an insult nowadays, but it’s the shade that made me laugh🤣
“with 3 younger sisters grown up, your Ladyship can hardly expect me to own it.” – elizabeth bennett (context: lady catherine asking her her age)
i was just OH SNAP
Can’t name any quotes but Austen had some biting humour! Keeps bringing me back to her.
Literally everything Mr Bennet said
This one gets a good deep chuckle from me every time:
Captain Harville: “I do not think I ever opened a book in my life which did not have something to say on women’s fickleness.”
Anne Elliot: ” But they were all written by men.”
From memory, may be a bit inaccurate:
“She was a woman of few words, for unlike most of her acquaintance, she proportioned them to the number of her ideas.”
I should as soon call her mother a wit.
Mr. Darcy, P & P
I quote that first one so often!
“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.”
The opening sentence of *P & P*.
“The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid”
I just finished Northanger Abbey, and everytime Catherine had to listen to John Thorpe yammer on and on, especially in their carriage rides. I could picture her yawning and rolling her eyes inside lol.
I may be misquoting it but, “Today you shall lose a parent, your mother if you don’t marry him, and me if you do,” – Mr. Bennett talking to Elizabeth about Mr. Collins.
I love when Mr Collins first visits the Bennets, and Mr Bennet takes the piss out of him at the table:
[Mr Collins] “Her indifferent state of health unhappily prevents her being in town; and by that means, as I told Lady Catherine one day, has deprived the British court of its brightest ornament. These are the kind of little things which please her ladyship, and it is a sort of attention which I conceive myself peculiarly bound to pay.”
“You judge very properly,” said Mr. Bennet, “and it is happy for you that you possess the talent of flattering with delicacy. **May I ask whether these pleasing attentions proceed from the impulse of the moment, or are the result of previous study?**”
[Mr Collins] “They arise chiefly from what is passing at the time, and though I sometimes amuse myself with suggesting and arranging such little elegant compliments as may be adapted to ordinary occasions, I always wish to give them as unstudied an air as possible.”
Mr. Bennet’s expectations were fully answered. His cousin was as absurd as he had hoped, and he listened with the keenest enjoyment, maintaining at the same time the most resolute composure of countenance, and except in an occasional glance at Elizabeth, requiring no partner in his pleasure.
The entirety of Mr. Collins’s letter in P&P is outrageously funny. I think he’s my favorite comedic character of all time. Nobody writes pompous asses like Austen.
“I haven’t any right to criticise books, and I don’t do it except when I hate them. I often want to criticise Jane Austen, but her books madden me so that I can’t conceal my frenzy from the reader; and therefore I have to stop every time I begin. Everytime I read ‘Pride and Prejudice’ I want to dig her up and beat her over the skull with her own shin-bone.”
– Mark Twain
“I am all astonishment” – Caroline Bingley. To this day, my wife and I both say this to each other when something surprising happens.
The scene that truly made me laugh out loud the hardest of any Austen is just the coughing scene in Pride and Prejudice. It’s like full comedy. It’s such a perfect family moment from Mr Bennet where he’s teasing his daughter kindly.
I KNEW YOU COULD NOT BE SO BEAUTIFUL FOR NOTHING.
–Pride and Prejudice.
“I’m not Jane Austen.” A Lady.
“The ejaculation in Emma’s ear”
Pretty much everything Mr. Bennet said in Pride and Prejudice made me laugh
If I loved you less, I could talk about it more
I may have lost my heart, but not my self-control
She was one of those, who, having, once begun, would be always in love.
Perhaps it is our imperfections that make us so perfect for one another
– all are from Emma
> He considered the blessing of beauty as inferior only to the blessing of a baronetcy; and the Sir Walter Elliot, who united these gifts, was the constant object of his warmest respect and devotion.
always make me smile.
>An unhappy alternative is before you, Elizabeth. From this day you must be a stranger to one of your parents. Your mother will never see you again if you do not marry Mr. Collins, and I will never see you again if you do.
Pride and Prejudice
I’m reading all of Jane Austen now, and I find her babbling women hysterical: Mrs. Bennet, Miss Bates (Mrs. Peacock, anyone??), Mrs. Allen. Of the men, John Thorpe’s bloviations are hilarious, as are Mr. Bennett’s dry retorts.
Two specific quotes:
1. *Northanger Abbey*, when Catherine first meets Tilney and tells him that she’s been in Bath for a week:
“Really!” with affected astonishment.
“Why should you be surprised, sir?”
“Why, indeed!” said he, in his natural tone. “But some emotion must appear to be raised by your reply, and surprise is more easily assumed, and not less reasonable than any other.”
2. *Sense and Sensibility*, when Marianne reminisces about the autumn leaves at Norland Park:
“Oh,” cried Marianne, “with what transporting sensation have I formerly seen them fall! How have I delighted, as I walked, to see them driven in showers about me by the wind! What feelings have they, the season, the air altogether inspired! Now there is no one to regard them. They are seen only as a nuisance, swept hastily off, and driven as much as possible from the sight.”
“It is not every one,” said Elinor, “who has your passion for dead leaves.”
A lot of Mr. Bennet’s quotes make me laugh. I love when Mary is hammering away at the piano at the Netherfield Ball and finally Mr. B says, “You have delighted us long enough.”
Mr. Bennet speculates that Mr. Gardiner paid Wickham to marry Lydia.
“Wickham’s a fool if he takes her with a farthing less than ten thousand pounds: **I should be sorry to think so ill of him, in the very beginning of our relationship**.”