Best Classics Novels

Two hundred and forty years ago today, Jane Austen was born. She would go on to become one of our most beloved English writers, her unfailing pen of irony serving up some of the wittiest turns of phrase in literature.

Magazine agony aunts have nothing on the queen of romantic fiction, whose shrewd, often piercing observations on love, marriage, society, family and the human condition still ring true in 2015.

Here is the best advice we ever learned from her classic novels:

Reputation is a valuable thing

“Good opinion once lost, is lost forever.” - Pride and Prejudice

People will see through your bulls**t

“It isn’t what we say or think that defines us, but what we do” - Sense and Sensibility

There is no better break-up cure than your mates

“Friendship is certainly the finest balm for the pangs of disappointed love.” - Northanger Abbey

Get some perspective

“What are men to rocks and mountains?” - Pride and Prejudice

Don’t let others get to you

“There is a stubbornness about me that never can bear to be frightened at the will of others. My courage always rises at every attempt to intimidate me.” - Pride and Prejudice

Remember you deserve the best

“I always deserve the best treatment because I never put up with any other.” - Emma

Sofa sessions are underrated

“There is nothing like staying at home for real comfort.” - Emma

Ignorance is bliss, even in marriage

“Happiness in marriage is entirely a matter of chance. If the dispositions of the parties are ever so well known to each other or ever so similar beforehand, it does not advance their felicity in the least. They always continue to grow sufficiently unlike afterwards to have their share of vexation; and it is better to know as little as possible of the defects of the person with whom you are to pass your life.”

Give people space to be themselves

“One man’s style must not be the rule of another’s.” - Emma

Keep the hope

“Know your own happiness. Want for nothing but patience - or give it a more fascinating name: Call it hope.” - Sense and Sensibility

Happiness is a personal thing

“I wish, as well as everybody else, to be perfectly happy; but, like everybody else, it must be in my own way.” - Sense and Sensibility

The more the merrier

“One cannot have too large a party.” - Emma

Trust the voice inside your head

“We have all a better guide in ourselves, if we would attend to it, than any other person can be.” - Mansfield Park