#austen

It has sunk him, I cannot say how much it has sunk him in my opinion. So unlike what a man should be!-None of that upright integrity, that strict adherence to truth and principle, that distain of trick and littleness, which a man should display in every transaction of his life. ↗

— Jane Austen

#emma #integrity #jane-austen #man #trick

But look behind you, Mary.' She nodded towards the dais. 'One of the musicians seems to be trying to attract your attention.' It was Peter. He was standing on the dais smiling across at me. My delight at seeing him was such that I could not disguise it - did not try to disguise it. ↗

— Jennifer Paynter

#expectation #happiness #jane-austen #love #peter-bushell

I found I could listen without envy to Letty's singing, and afterwards when the applause came, I did not mind that Mrs Knowles was heaping praises upon her. Peter's hands were on my chair, and when I leaned back I could feel them against my shoulders. ↗

— Jennifer Paynter

#jane-austen #jennifer-paynter #love #loyalty #mary-bennet

Good heaven! My dear Isabella, what do you mean? Can you -- can you really be in love with James? ↗

— Jane Austen

#northanger-abbey #love

Few novelists can be more scrupulous than Jane Austen as to the phrasing of the thoughts of their characters. ↗

— Mary Lascelles

#art

As for Elizabeth Bennet, our chief reason for accepting her point of view as a reflection of her author's is the impression that she bears of sympathy between them--an impression of which almost every reader would be sensible, even if it had not the explicit confirmation of Jane Austen's letters. Yet, as she is presented to us in Pride and Prejudice, she is but a partial and sometimes perverse observer. ↗

— Mary Lascelles

#jane-austen #pride-and-prejudice #art

Anyone who has the temerity to write about Jane Austen is aware of [two] facts: first, that of all great writers she is the most difficult to catch in the act of greatness; second, that there are twenty-five elderly gentlemen living in the neighbourhood of London who resent any slight upon her genius as if it were an insult to the chastity of their aunts. ↗

— Virginia Woolf

#criticism #jane-austen #london

I'm like Jane Austen - I work on the corner of the dining table. ↗

— A. N. Wilson

#corner #dining #i #jane #jane austen

I haven't any right to criticize books, and I don't do it except when I hate them. I often want to criticize 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. Every time I read Pride and Prejudice I want to dig her up and beat her over the skull with her own shin-bone. ↗

— Mark Twain

#criticism #jerk #reading #writing #want

Miss Austen had shown the infinite possibilities of ordinary and present things for the novelist. ↗

— George Saintsbury

#had #infinite #miss #novelist #ordinary