336 Quotes About Jane-austen

It is always easy to question the judgement of others in matters of which we may be imperfectly informed.

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.

План, който предвещава само наслади, никога не се осъществява; малките несгоди предпазват от пълно разочарование.

And with regard to the resentment of his family, or the indignation of the world, if the former were excited by his marrying me, it would not give me one moment's concern-- and the world in general would have too much sense to join in the scorn.

The more I see of the world, the more I am dissatisfied with it;- Elizabeth Bennet (Volume 2, chapter 1)

... it had become agreed that Jane would be excused household duties. It sounds like a tiny thing – and indeed it was – but a tiny trickle of water gradually hollows out a stone. Jane’s ducking out of the housework in order to write would lead inexorably onwards, upwards, towards women working, to women winning power in a world of men. This is the significance of trying to reconstruct the detail of Jane Austen’s daily life.

And the last word may go to Virginia Woolf: Jane Austen was born before those bonds which (we are told) protected woman from truth, were burst by the Brontës or elaborately untied by George Eliot. Yet the fact remains that Jane Austen knew much more about men than either of them. Jane Austen may have been protected from truth: but it was precious little of truth that was protected from her.

Great’ writers were so obviously supposed to be male, and not anyone’s aunt.

Jane admitted, ‘I drank too much wine last night … I know not how else to account for the shaking of my hand to day.