#jan

I am at a loss to understand why people hold Miss Austen's novels at so high a rate, which seem to me vulgar in tone, sterile in artistic invention, imprisoned in their wretched conventions of English society, without genius, wit, or knowledge of the world. Never was life so pinched and narrow. ... All that interests in any character [is this]: has he (or she) the money to marry with? ... Suicide is more respectable. ↗

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

#life

The celestial brightness of Pride and Prejudice is unequalled even in Jane Austen's other work; after a life of much disappointment and grief, in which some people would have seen nothing but tedium and emptiness, she stepped forth as an author, breathing gaiety and youth, robed in dazzling light. ↗

— Elizabeth Jenkins

#jane-austen #pride-and-prejudice #life

It is a truth universally acknowledged, he’d mused, that most people will never find their ‘call me Ishmael’. ↗

— Django Wylie

#jane-austen #moby-dick #pride-and-prejudice #truth #wordplay

I had never in all my life felt so elated. Peter cared for me! It was a miracle I longed to celebrate - to tell all Hertfordshire - and I had to hold my hand to my mouth against an involuntary smile. ↗

— Jennifer Paynter

#jane-austen #love #mary-bennet #peter-bushell #pride-and-prejudice

Did I ever tell you that Alex loves you so much he got your name tattooed all over his body? Hell, he even got your name branded into the back of his neck." "They say 'LB,' Carlos. The initials for Latino Blood." "No, no, no. You've got it all wrong. He wants everyone to think that, but in reality it means Lover of Brittany. LB, get it? ↗

— Simone Elkeles

#alex #brittany #carlos #carlos-fuentes #fuentes

Jane, you are my confidante, my helpmate, my friend. My lover. You are everything the word wife means to me. In my heart, we are wed. In my soul, you are mine. ↗

— Charlotte Featherstone

#love #sinful #soulmate #wallingford #wife

How can the word love, the word life, even fit in the mouth? ↗

— Jandy Nelson

#jandy-nelson #life #love #the-sky-is-everywhere #life

The thing is, Iris, I've never liked the idea of compromise. In films and in stories people who love each other — really love each other — make horrendous sacrifices. They give kidneys they move across the world they die. Or become the undead because you know I like that sort of book. Basically the heroine's lover calls and she answers. Which is stupid. You know why ” Iris shook her head. “Because he's always fucking calling. ↗

— Nicole Peeler

#jane-true #love #love

To a good man, yes, one who knows her in all her moods, who can laugh at her follies and rejoice in her virtues; who will not allow her to give in to her worst instincts; one who knows her, and who, knowing her, will still love her, and love her as she should be loved. ↗

— Amanda Grange

#love

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

— Jane Austen

#marianne-dashwood #sense-and-sensibility #love