The Story of Jane Austen's Life

Front Cover
A. C. McClurg, 1891 - Novelists, English - 277 pages

From inside the book

Other editions - View all

Common terms and phrases

Popular passages

Page 250 - Where people wish to attach, they should always be ignorant. To come with a well-informed mind is to come with an inability of administering to the vanity of others, which a sensible person would always wish to avoid. A woman especially, if she have the misfortune of knowing any thing, should conceal it as well as she can.
Page 246 - Her pleasure in the walk must arise from the exercise and the day, from the view of the last smiles of the year upon the tawny leaves and withered hedges, and from repeating to herself some few of the thousand poetical descriptions extant of autumn, that season of peculiar and inexhaustible influence on the mind of taste and tenderness...
Page 232 - Walter Scott has no business to write novels, especially good ones. — It is not fair. — He has Fame and Profit enough as a Poet, and should not be taking the bread out of other people's mouths. — I do not like him, & do not mean to like Waverley if I can help it — but fear I must.
Page 252 - Personal size and mental sorrow have certainly no necessary proportions. A large bulky figure has as good a right to be in deep affliction as the most graceful set of limbs in the world. But, fair or not fair, there are unbecoming conjunctions, which reason will patronize in vain — which taste cannot tolerate — which ridicule will seize.
Page 256 - I hope I do justice to all that is felt by you, and by those who resemble you. God forbid that I should undervalue the warm and faithful feelings of any of my fellowcreatures. I should deserve utter contempt if I dared to suppose that true attachment and constancy were known only by woman. No, I believe you capable of every thing great and good in your married lives.
Page 253 - And what are you reading, Miss — ?' 'Oh! it is only a novel!' replies the young lady; while she lays down her book with affected indifference, or momentary shame. - 'It is only Cecilia, or Camilla, or Belinda...
Page 247 - An advantage this, a strengthener of love, in which even the conjugal tie is beneath the fraternal. Children of the same family, the same blood, with the same first associations and habits, have some means of enjoyment in their power, which no subsequent connections can supply...
Page 210 - God bless you, my dear E. If ever you are ill, may you be as tenderly nursed as I have been. May the same blessed alleviations of anxious, sympathizing friends be yours : and may you possess, as I dare say you will, the greatest blessing of all in the consciousness of not being unworthy of their love. I could not feel this.
Page 253 - it is only a novel! " replies the young lady ; while she lays down her book with affected indifference, or momentary shame. " It is only Cecilia, or Camilla, or Belinda; " or, in short, only some work in which the greatest powers of the mind are displayed, in which the most thorough knowledge of human nature, the happiest delineation of its varieties, the liveliest effusions of wit and humour, are conveyed to the world in the best chosen language.
Page 134 - It was the same room in which we danced fifteen years ago. I thought it all over, and in spite of the shame of being so much older, felt with thankfulness that I was quite as happy now as then.

Bibliographic information