works-by-jane-austen

"Miss Morland, no one can think more highly of the understanding of women than I do. In my opinion, nature has given them so much, that they never find it necessary to use more than half., p. 228, 2013"

"A distinction to which they had been born gave no pride., p. 284, 2013, en:s:Northanger Abbey/Chapter 17"

"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., p. 302, 2013, en:s:Northanger Abbey/Chapter 19"

"Me?— yes; I cannot speak well enough to be unintelligible., p. 268, 2013, en:s:Northanger Abbey/Chapter 16"

"“As far as I have had opportunity of judging, it appears to be that the usual style of letter-writing among women is faultless, except in three particulars.” “And what are they?” “A general deficiency of subject, a total inattention to stops, and a very frequent ignorance of grammar.” p. 52, 2013"

"You have gained a new source of enjoyment, and it is well to have as many holds on happiness as possible., p. 356, 2013, en:s:Northanger Abbey/Chapter 22"

"Prepare for your sister-in-law, Eleanor, and such a sister-in-law as you must delight in! Open, candid, artless, guileless, with affections strong but simple, forming no pretensions, and knowing no disguise. en:s:Northanger Abbey/Chapter 25"

"It is probable that she will neither love so well, nor flirt so well, as she might do either singly., p. 302, 2013"

"“Historians, you think,” said Miss Tilney, “are not happy in their flights of fancy. They display imagination without raising interest.”, p. 226, 2013"

"From politics it was an easy step to silence."

"“I use the verb ‘to torment,’ as I observed to be your own method, instead of ‘to instruct,’ supposing them to be now admitted as synonimous.”, p. 228, 2013"

""There is nothing I would not do for those who are really my friends. I have no notion of loving people by halves; it is not my nature." - Isabella Thorpe, en:s:Northanger Abbey/Chapter 6"

"Mrs. Morland was a very good woman, and wished to see her children everything they ought to be; but her time was so much occupied in lying–in and teaching the little ones, that her elder daughters were inevitably left to shift for themselves; and it was not very wonderful that Catherine, who had by nature nothing heroic about her, should prefer cricket, base ball, riding on horseback, and running about the country at the age of fourteen, to books — or at least books of information — for, provided that nothing like useful knowledge could be gained from them, provided they were all story and no reflection, she had never any objection to books at all."

"The mere habit of learning to love is the thing; and a teachableness of disposition in a young lady is a great blessing."

"I will not say, ‘Do not be uneasy,’ because I know that you are so, at this moment; but be as little uneasy as you can., p. 304, 2013"

"I am come, young ladies, in a very moralizing strain, to observe that our pleasures in this world are always to be paid for, and that we often purchase them at a great disadvantage, giving ready-monied actual happiness for a draft on the future, that may not be honoured., p. 428, 2013, en:s:Northanger Abbey/Chapter 24"

"If we do not have hearts, we have eyes; and they give us torment enough., p. 294, 2013, en:s:Northanger Abbey/Chapter 18"

"Mrs. Allen was one of that numerous class of females, whose society can raise no other emotion than surprise at there being any men in the world who could like them well enough to marry them. p. 34, 2013, en:s:Northanger Abbey/Chapter 2"

"Let us leave it to the reviewers to abuse such effusions of fancy at their leisure, and over every new novel to talk in threadbare strains of the trash with which the press now groans. Let us not desert one another; we are an injured body. Although our productions have afforded more extensive and unaffected pleasure than those of any other literary corporation in the world, no species of composition has been so much decried. From pride, ignorance, or fashion, our foes are almost as many as our readers. And while the abilities of the nine-hundredth abridger of the History of England, or of the man who collects and publishes in a volume some dozen lines of Milton, Pope, and Prior, with a paper from the Spectator, and a chapter from Sterne, are eulogized by a thousand pens — there seems almost a general wish of decrying the capacity and undervaluing the labour of the novelist, and of slighting the performances which have only genius, wit, and taste to recommend them. "I am no novel-reader — I seldom look into novels — Do not imagine that I often read novels — It is really very well for a novel." Such is the common cant. "And what are you reading, Miss — ?" "Oh! It is only a novel!" replies the young lady, while she lays down her book with affected indifference, or momentary shame. "It is only Cecilia, or Camilla, or Belinda"; or, in short, only some work in which the greatest powers of the mind are displayed, in which the most thorough knowledge of human nature, the happiest delineation of its varieties, the liveliest effusions of wit and humour, are conveyed to the world in the best-chosen language."

""But history, real solemn history, I cannot be interested in. ... it is very tiresome: and yet I often think it odd that it should be so dull, for a great deal of it must be invention."

"You think me foolish to call instruction a torment, but if you had been as much used as myself to hear poor little children first learning their letters and then learning to spell, if you had ever seen how stupid they can be for a whole morning together, and how tired my poor mother is at the end of it, as I am in the habit of seeing almost every day of my life at home, you would allow that to torment and to instruct might sometimes be used as synonimous words., p. 228, 2013"

"A woman especially, if she have the misfortune of knowing anything, should conceal it as well as she can."

"Nay, if it is to be guess-work, let us all guess for ourselves. To be guided by second-hand conjecture is pitiful. The premises are before you., p. 302, 2013"

"But historians are not accountable for the difficulty of learning to read; and even you yourself, who do not altogether seem particularly friendly to very severe, very intense application, may perhaps be brought to acknowledge that it is very well worth while to be tormented for two or three years of one's life, for the sake of being able to read all the rest of it., p. 228, 2013"

"“That little boys and girls should be tormented,” said Henry, “is what no one at all acquainted with human nature in a civilized state can deny; but in behalf of our most distinguished historians, I must observe, that they might well be offended at being supposed to have no higher aim; and that by their method and style, they are perfectly well qualified to torment readers of the most advanced reason and mature time of life.”, p. 226, 2013"

""The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid." - Henry Tilney, in: en:s:Northanger Abbey/Chapter 14."

"Every body allows that the talent of writing agreeable letters is peculiarly female. p. 52, 2013"

"But Mrs. Morland knew so little of lords and baronets, that she entertained no notion of their general mischievousness, and was wholly unsuspicious of danger to her daughter from their machinations."

"His departure gave Catherine the first experimental conviction that a loss may be sometimes a gain., p. 448, 2013, en:s:Northanger Abbey/Chapter 28"

"As for admiration, it was always very welcome when it came, but she did not depend on it. p. 36, 2013"

"Now I must give one smirk, and then we may be rational again. p. 50, 2013, en:s:Northanger Abbey/Chapter 3"

"She left it to himself to recollect, that Mrs. Smith was not the only widow in Bath between thirty and forty, with little to live on, and no surname of dignity."

"One man's ways may be as good as another's, but we all like our own best."

"Upon Lady Russell's appearance soon afterwards, the whole party was collected, and all that remained was to marshal themselves, and proceed into the Concert Room; and be of all the consequence in their power, draw as many eyes, excite as many whispers, and disturb as many people as they could."

"She thought it was the misfortune of poetry to be seldom safely enjoyed by those who enjoyed it completely; and that the strong feelings which alone could estimate it truly were the very feelings which ought to taste it but sparingly."

"He could not forgive her, but he could not be unfeeling. Though condemning her for the past, and considering it with high and unjust resentment, though perfectly careless of her, and though becoming attached to another, still he could not see her suffer, without the desire of giving her relief. It was a remainder of former sentiment; it was an impulse of pure, though unacknowledged friendship; it was a proof of his own warm and amiable heart, which she could not contemplate without emotions so compounded of pleasure and pain, that she knew not which prevailed."

"It was evident that the gentleman, (completely a gentleman in manner) admired her exceedingly. Captain Wentworth looked round at her instantly in a way which shewed his noticing of it. He gave her a momentary glance, a glance of brightness, which seemed to say, 'That man is struck with you, and even I, at this moment, see something like Anne Elliot again.'"

"A man does not recover from such a devotion of the heart to such a woman! He ought not; he does not."

"Now they were as strangers; nay, worse than strangers, for they could never become acquainted."

"A few years before, Anne Elliot had been a very pretty girl, but her bloom had vanished early; and as even in its height, her father had found little to admire in her, (so totally different were her delicate features and mild dark eyes from his own), there could be nothing in them, now that she was faded and thin, to excite his esteem."

"His cold politeness, his ceremonious grace, were worse than anything."

"She had spoken it; but she trembled when it was done, conscious that her words were listened to, and daring not even to try to observe their effect."

"Elizabeth had succeeded at sixteen to all that was possible of her mother's rights and consequence; and being very handsome, and very like himself, her influence had always been great, and they had gone on together most happily. His other two children were of very inferior value. Mary had acquired a little artificial importance by becoming Mrs Charles Musgrove; but Anne, with an elegance of mind and sweetness of character, which must have placed her high with any people of real understanding, was nobody with either father or sister; her word had no weight, her convenience was always to give way — she was only Anne."

"Vanity was the beginning and the end of Sir Walter Elliot's character; vanity of person and of situation. He had been remarkably handsome in his youth; and, at fifty-four, was still a very fine man. Few women could think more of their personal appearance than he did, nor could the valet of any new made lord be more delighted with the place he held in society. He considered the blessing of beauty as inferior only to the blessing of a baronetcy; and the Sir Walter Elliott, who united these gifts, was the constant object of his warmest respect and devotion."

"I hate to hear you talking so like a fine gentleman, and as if women were all fine ladies, instead of rational creatures. We none of us expect to be in smooth water all our days."

"If I was wrong in yielding to persuasion once, remember that it was to persuasion exerted on the side of safety, not of risk. When I yielded, I thought it was to duty; but no duty could be called in aid here. In marrying a man indifferent to me, all risk would have been incurred, and all duty violated."

"You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope. 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 and a half years ago. Dare not say that a man forgets sooner than woman, that his love has an earlier death. I have loved none but you. Unjust I may have been, weak and resentful I have been, but never inconstant."

"Anne was tenderness itself, and she had the full worth of it in Captain Wentworth's affection. His profession was all that could ever make her friends wish that tenderness less, the dread of a future war all that could dim her sunshine. She gloried in being a sailor's wife, but she must pay the tax of quick alarm for belonging to that profession which is, if possible, more distinguished in its domestic virtues than in its national importance."

"Here Anne spoke: "The navy, I think, who have done so much for us, have at least an equal claim with any other set of men, for all the comforts and all the privileges which any home can give. Sailors work hard enough for their comforts, we must all allow." "Very true, very true. What Miss Anne says is very true," was Mr. Shepherd's rejoinder, and "Oh! certainly," was his daughter's; but Sir Walter's remark was, soon afterwards: "The profession has its utility, but I should be sorry to see any friend of mine belonging to it." "Indeed!" was the reply, and with a look of surprise. "Yes; it is in two points offensive to me; I have two strong grounds of objection to it. First, as a means of bringing persons of obscure birth into undue distinction, and raising men to honours which their fathers and grandfathers never dreamt of; and secondly, as it cuts up a man's youth and vigour most horribly; a sailor grows old sooner than any other man. I have observed it all my life. A man is in greater danger in the navy of being insulted by the rise of one whose father his father might have disdained to speak to, and of becoming prematurely an object of disgust himself, than in any other line.""

"How quick come the reasons for approving what we like!"