What I admire about Austen (among hundreds of other commendable qualities) is her traditional rather than modern conception of morality. She sees it, as did Aristotle, Aquinas, and Marx, as a matter of public conduct, not as the inner light, interior emotions, what you happen to be feeling, what you find aesthetically alluring, and the like. She’s an extremely tough-minded ethical realist in an increasingly corrupt, sentimentalist culture.
-Terry Eagleton
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