When I first met him (Michael) at the beginning of the year and found out that I would have to be his lab partner in bio and the year-long series of projects in AP English,...

Mrs Bennet was a great connoissuer of feminine beauty and indeed it must be owned that she herself was a very handsome woman. As to the sweetness of her temper, there was less compelling evidence;...

Anne did think on the question with perfect decision, and said as much in replay as her own feelings could accomplish, or as his seemed able to bear, for he was too much affected to...

Dear, dear Norland,’ said Elinor, ‘probably looks much as it always does at this time of year. The woods and walks thickly covered with dead leaves.’ ‘Oh!’ cried Marianne, ‘with what transporting sensations have I...

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

How weird? We’re all dressed like people in a Jane Austen book. I think weird comes with the territory.

After a moment, he added more seriously: ‘I don’t get as angry as m’father used to about things. Or maybe I’, just better at hiding m’feelings.”I fear I’m not very good at hiding my feelings.’He...

For [Jane Austen and the readers of Pride and Prejudice], as for Mr. Darcy, [Elizabeth Bennett’s] solitary walks express the independence that literally takes the heroine out of the social sphere of the houses and...

She was the sun of my life, the gilder of every pleasure, the soother of every sorrow, I had not a thought concealed from her, and it is as if I had lost a part...

For it was a truth universally acknowledged that a single vicar must be in want of a wife.

You either choose this method of passing the evening because you are in each other’s confidence, and have secret affairs to discuss, or because you are conscious that your figures appear to the greatest advantage...

No poseo el talento de otros que pueden conversar con facilidad con quienes nunca han visto. No tengo valor para ello ni puedo adaptarme al carácter de los demás con la facilidad que otros lo...

Lady Catherine quoting Lizzie Bennet:She had the impudence to reply that, whilst these would be heavy misfortunes, your wife must have such extraordinary sources of happiness necessarily attached to her situation, that she could, upon...

Jane Austen’s narrative style seems to me to show (especially in the later novels) a curiously chameleon-like faculty; it varies in colour as the habits of expression of the several characters impress themselves on the...

Ah yes.’ Peter’s tone was scornful. ‘And they must always be paid before the poor tradesmen’s bills, mustn’t they?”They must indeed. They are debts of honour.”Oh, Mary.’ He leant over and kissed me quickly. ‘What...

Vimes thought for a moment and said, ‘Well, dear, it is a truth universally acknowledged that a man with a lot of wood must be in want of a wife who can handle a great...

The visible structure of Jane Austen’s stories may be flimsy enough; but their foundations drive deep down into the basic principles of human conduct. On her bit of ivory she has engraved a criticism of...

Her family had of late been exceedingly fluctuating. For many years of her life she had had two sons; but the crime and annihilation of Edward a few weeks ago, had robbed her of one;...

…the more I know of the world, the more I am convinced that I shall never see a man whom I can really love.

Every thing he did was right. Every thing he said was clever. If their evenings at the park included cards, he cheated himself and all the rest of the party to get her a good...

I always liked ‘nothing is so good as it seems beforehand.’ I think that’s the perfect Eliot quote for the moment we head off to a garden party.

To me [Edgar Allen Poe’s] prose is unreadable—like Jane Austin’s [sic]. No there is a difference. I could read his prose on salary, but not Jane’s. Jane is entirely impossible. It seems a great pity...

I will probably die a misunderstood virgin like Ophelia in HAMLET, only I won’t do it by floating down a stream, singing my own mad song. They’ll just find me here, on my bed, on...

I don’t need to see the trail to know you’re at the end of it. My grandfather’s compass may not work, but mine is still true.

I will only add, God bless you.

It raises my spleen more than anything.

She is probably by this time as tired of me, as I am of her; but as she is too Polite and I am too civil to say so, our letters are still as frequent...

Jane Austen would be so proud. Another girl trussed up for a fancy party.””On the contrary, she’d be horrified. All that skin. You’d need about another five yards of material.

I lost the letter in rather embarrassing circumstances. We were to dine at Parramatta Government House that same evening, and Peter had come in early from harvesting the wheat, sitting down in all his dirt...

If Mr. [V.S.] Naipaul takes no pleasure in the happy delineation of the varieties of human nature, then he must be intolerably stupid.

She was opinionated without being pushy. When choosing a book to read aloud, she would try to interest him in those spunky English heroines she liked so much. He proposed Thucydides, but he understood how...

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.

Let us never underestimate the power of a well-written letter.

She is tolerable; but not handsome enough to tempt me; I am in no humour at present to give consequence to young ladies who are slighted by other men.

Tonight, however, Dickens struck him in a different light. Beneath the author’s sentimental pity for the weak and helpless, he could discern a revolting pleasure in cruelty and suffering, while the grotesque figures of the...

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

This made my father laugh. ‘Mary made a cake, did she? Well, well. Better that than she should make a cake for herself, I suppose.’Peter then burst out: ‘Why must you always be making a...

Jane Austen easily used half a page describing someone else’s eyes; she would not appreciate summarizing her reading tastes in ten titles.

She is never alone when she has Her Books. Books, to her, are Friends. Give her Shakespeare or Jane Austen, Meredith or Hardy, and she is Lost – lost in a world of her own....

Money can only give happiness where there is nothing else to give it.

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

To be so bent on Marriage – to pursue a man merely for the sake of situation – is a sort of thing that shocks me; I cannot understand it. Poverty is a great Evil,...

But I don’t think I can have even that, anymore.

Everytime I read ‘Pride and Prejudice’ I want to dig her up and beat her over the skull with her own shin-bone.

Suddenly a force greater than my common sense—which, I’ll admit, has been pretty faulty lately, propels me—and I find myself creeping up the long staircase to the forbidden second floor. I need to see Michael’s...

In the Blue Room, Cora Cash was trying to concentrate on her book. Cora found most novels hard to sympathise with — all those plain governesses — but this one had much to recommend it....

It was gratitude; gratitude, not merelyfor having once loved her, but for loving her still well enough to forgive all the petulance and acrimony of her manner in rejecting him.

The loss of virtue in a female is irretrievable – that one false step involves in her endless ruin – that her reputation is no less brittle than it is beautiful – and that she...

No one can withstand the charm of such a mystery.

Okay, I may cry just a bit but it’s only because it’s an Austen-era reproduction and anybody would feel the pain of destroying something so lovely.