#jane

It's the most charming thing about humans. You are all so sure that the lesser animals are bleeding with envy because they didn't have the good fortune to be born Homo sapiens. ↗

— Orson Scott Card

#envy

They spoke almost as loud as Feeling: and that clamoured wildly. "Oh, comply!" it said. "Think of his misery; think of his danger — look at his state when left alone; remember his headlong nature; consider the recklessness following on despair — soothe him; save him; love him; tell him you love him and will be his. Who in the world cares for you? or who will be injured by what you do?" Still indomitable was the reply — "I care for myself. The more solitary, the more friendless, the more unsustained I am, the more I will respect myself. I will keep the law given by God; sanctioned by man. I will hold to the principles received by me when I was sane, and not mad — as I am now. Laws and principles are not for the times when there is no temptation: they are for such moments as this, when body and soul rise in mutiny against their rigour; stringent are they; inviolate they shall be. If at my individual convenience I might break them, what would be their worth? They have a worth — so I have always believed; and if I cannot believe it now, it is because I am quite insane — quite insane: with my veins running fire, and my heart beating faster than I can count its throbs. Preconceived opinions, foregone determinations, are all I have this hour to stand by: there I plant my foot. ↗

— Charlotte Brontë

#love

Tell you what, you let me go, and I’ll ask you plenty of questions about your race. Until then, I’m slightly distracted with how this little vacation on the good ship Holy Sh*t is going to pan out for me. ↗

— J.R. Ward

#humor #jane #paranormal #romance #vampire

And soon we were just rolling around on the ground, cursing and screeching and ripping out handfuls of hair. Without super hearing, I wouldn't have heard Zeb whisper, "This is the coolest thing I have ever seen." "Maybe they'll get muddy," Dick said. "Please, Lord, let them get muddy. ↗

— Molly Harper

#funny #jane-jameson #missy #molly-harper #mud

Jane Austen never repeats herself. ↗

— Mary Lascelles

#art

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 relation of the episode in which they are involved, and on the description of their situations. ↗

— Mary Lascelles

#art

I suspect that Jane Austen's practice of denying herself the aid of figurative language which, as much as any of her other habits of expression, repelled Charlotte Brontë, and has alienated other readers, conscious with a dissatisfaction with her style that they have not cared to analyse. ↗

— Mary Lascelles

#jane-austen #art

The sole agents, indeed, in the action of her novels are individual human beings. And the comedy is the outcome of their making fools of themselves and of one another. ↗

— Mary Lascelles

#art

Others beside Jane Austen have made their Eltons, though none quite so cooly as she. ↗

— Mary Lascelles

#art

Charlotte Palmer is no sillier than Harriet Smith; and yet, how intolerable we should find it to see and hear as much of Charlotte as we do of Harriet! And would Miss Bates have been endurable if she had been presented in the mood and manners of Sense and Sensibility? ↗

— Mary Lascelles

#jane-austen #sense-and-sensibility #art