Let's celebrate with quotes from her novels.
Everybody likes to go their own way--to choose their own time and manner of devotion.Mansfield Park
If any one faculty of our nature may be called more wonderful than the rest, I do think it is memory. There seems something more speakingly incomprehensible in the powers, the failures, the inequalities of memory, than in any other of our intelligences. The memory is sometimes so retentive, so serviceable, so obedient; at others, so bewildered and so weak; and at others again, so tyrannic, so beyond control! We are, to be sure, a miracle every way; but our powers of recollecting and of forgetting do seem peculiarly past finding out.Mansfield Park
Nothing amuses me more than the easy manner with which everybody settles the abundance of those who have a great deal less than themselves.Mansfield Park
Oh! Do not attack me with your watch. A watch is always too fast or too slow. I cannot be dictated to by a watch.Mansfield Park
For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbours, and laugh at them in our turn?Pride and Prejudice
Loss of virtue in a female is irretrievable; that one false step involves her in endless ruin; that her reputation is no less brittle than it is beautiful; and that she cannot be too much guarded in her behaviour towards the undeserving of the other sex.Pride and Prejudice
She consoled herself for the loss of her husband by considering that she could do very well without him.Mansfield Park
"I cannot be dictated to by a watch," is my mantra. I'm always late. Sometimes it actually pays off. Today I went to my doctor's appointment a tad tardy, and he saw me right away. I by-passed the second waiting room.
The image is from the Pride and Prejudice 2009 calendar, with illustrations by Hugh Thompson. If you'd like, you can buy a mouse pad and stickers there, too.
For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbours, and laugh at them in our turn?
ReplyDeleteMy all-time favorite Austen one-liner...
But honestly...the scene between Lady Catherine and Elizabeth in the garden is the single best piece of dialogue in the English language, AFAIC. Every time I read it, I want to cry because I know that I will never write anything half that good.
Doxy, that is excellent. I also love the first proposal scene in P&P, in which Elizabeth tells Darcy off.
ReplyDeleteI love all of Austen but perhaps P&P especially because of the way she so explicitly honors language and clarity.
ReplyDeleteHer clarity! Her wit! Her wisdom!
ReplyDeleteP&P is my favorite, too, SusanKay. From the age of 16, I wanted to BE Elizabeth Bennet.
Oh, I identified with Elizabeth Bennet too. In my case, I think it was a comfort to think that you could come from a poor and crazy family and still find someone who'd love you. Which I did, so see, it was all true.
ReplyDeleteI'm very fond of Emma, myself.
ReplyDeleteIT