Jane Austen Novel Quotes & Sayings

I ... am always half afraid of finding a clever novel too clever
& of finding my own story & my own people all forestalled. — Jane Austen

Every housemaid expects at least once a week as much excitement as would have lasted a Jane Austen heroine throughout a whole novel. — Bertrand Russell

I will not adopt that ungenerous and impolitic custom so common with novel writers, of degrading by their contemptuous censure the very performances, to the number of which they are themselves adding?joining with their greatest enemies in bestowing the harshest epithets on such works, and scarcely ever permitting them to be read by their own heroine, who, if she accidentally take up a novel, is sure to turn over its insipid leaves with disgust. — Jane Austen

Perhaps it's one of those cases of a microcosm giving you the whole world. Like a spode dinner plate. Or a single cell. Or, as daisy says, like a Jane Austen novel. When player and listener together know the route so well, the pleasure is in the deviation, the unexpected turn against the grain. To see a world in a grain of sand. So it is, Perowne tries to convince himself, with clipping an aneurysm: absorbing variation on an unchanging theme. — Ian McEwan

The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid. — Jane Austen

I felt like a Jane Austen heroine all of a sudden, confusedly looking on at all the people she loves, their myriad unpredictable couplings and uncouplings. There would be no marriages at the end of this Austen novel, though, no happy endings, no endings at all. Just jokes and friendships and romances and delicious declarations of independence. — Julie Powell

Well,if there's nothing else you ladies need in the library, Sophie, would you care to accompany me on a walk about the grounds?
I wondered if there were ever times when Dad didn't sound like he'd just escaped from a Jane Austen novel. — Rachel Hawkins

There would be more genuine rejoicing at the discovery of a complete new novel by Jane Austen than any other literary discovery, short of a new major play by Shakespeare. — Margaret Drabble

Yes, novels; for I will not adopt that ungenerous and impolitic custom, so common with novel-writers, of degrading, by their contemptuous censure, the very performances to the number of which they are themselves adding; joining with their greatest enemies in bestowing the harshest epithets on such works, and scarcely ever permitting them to be read by their own heroine, who, if she accidentally take up a novel, is sure to turn over its insipid pages with disgust. Alas! if the heroine of one novel be not patronised by the heroine of another, from whom can she expect protection and regard? I cannot approve of it. Let us leave it to the reviewers to abuse such effusions of fancy at their leisure, and over every new novel to talk in threadbare strains of the trash with which the press now groans. Let us not desert one another- we are an injured body. — Jane Austen

It was like being in a Jane Austen novel, but one with far less clothing. — Terry Pratchett

Was like being in a Jane Austen novel, but one with far less clothing. It — Terry Pratchett

Life was transparent, literature opaque. Life was open, literature a closed system. Life was composed of things, literature of words. Life was what it appeared to be: if you were afraid your plane would crash it was about death, if you were trying to get a girl into bed it was about sex. Literature was never about what it appeared to be about, though in the case of the novel cosiderable ingenuity and perception were needed to crack the code of realistic illusion, which was why he had been professionally attracted to the genre (even the dumbest critic understood that Hamlet wasn't about how the guy wanted to kill his uncle, or the Ancient Mariner about cruelty to animals, but it was surprising how many people thought Jane Austen's novels were about finding Mr Right). — David Lodge

All Jane Austen novels have a common storyline: an attractive and virtuous young woman surmounts difficulties to achieve marriage to the man of her choice. This is the age-long convention of the romantic novel, but with Jane Austen, what we have is Mills & Boon written by a genius. — P.D. James

Jane Austen is at the end of the line that begins with Samuel Richardson, which takes wonder and magic out of the novel, treats not the past but the present. — Leslie Fiedler

I think it's degrading of you, Flora,' cried Mrs Smiling at breakfast. 'Do you truly mean that you don't ever want to work at anything?'
Her friend replied after some thought: 'Well, when I am fifty-three or so I would like to write a novel as good as "Persuasion", but with a modern setting, of course. For the next thirty years or so I shall be collecting material for it. If anyone asks me what I work at, I shall say "Collecting material." No one can object to that. Besides, I shall be.'
Mrs Smiling drank some coffee in silent disapproval.
'If you ask me,' continued Flora, 'I think I have much in common with Miss Austen. She liked everything to be tidy and pleasant and comfortable around her, and so do I. You see Mary,' - and here Flora began to grow earnest and to wave one finger about - 'unless everything is tidy and pleasant and comfortable all about one, people cannot even begin to enjoy life. I cannot endure messes. — Stella Gibbons

And you're right- I don't want nice. I want sparks and fire. I want a romance novel. A Jane Austen movie. A fairy tale. — Shari L. Tapscott

I am no indiscriminate novel reader. The mere trash of the common circulating library I hold in the highest contempt. — Jane Austen

WHAT WAS JANE AUSTEN'S LAST FINISHED NOVEL?"
"Vaginas and Virginity."
"WHO IS THE LAST PERSON IAGO KILLS IN OTHELLO?"
"His manservant Retardio, for forgetting to change the Brita filter!"
"WHAT HAPPENS TO THE LITTLE MERMAID AT THE END OF CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN'S THE LITTLE MERMAID?"
"She turns into a fish and marries Nemo!"
"Fuck you! — David Levithan

'Emma' is my favorite Jane Austen novel - one of my favorite novels period; a novel about intelligence outsmarting itself, about a complicated, nuanced, irresistible heroine who does everything wrong. — Cathleen Schine

If the heroine of one novel be not patronized by the heroine of another, from whom can she expect protection and regard? — Jane Austen

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 renew the subject - and when he spoke again, it was something totally different. — Jane Austen

Every time I read a Jane Austen novel, I feel like a bartender at the gates of heaven. — Mark Twain

Jane Austen we know never let two men converse alone in any novel because what they said would be unknown to her. — Jane Gardam

I wondered if there were ever times when Dad didn't sound like he escaped from a Jane Austen novel. — Rachel Hawkins

My favorite book has always been Jane Austen's Persuasion and it's been the comfort blanket of my life which I know sounds a bit dramatic but, if ever I'm feeling fed up, it's my novel of choice. What I've always done when I can't face the world is to retreat into its pages and spend some time with Captain Wentworth. — Jane Odiwe

How I wish I lived in a Jane Austen novel! — Dodie Smith

In a lending library you see people's real tastes, not their pretended ones, and one thing that strikes you is how completely the 'classical' English novelists have dropped out of favour. It is simply useless to put Dickens, Thackeray, Jane Austen, Trollope, etc. into the ordinary lending library; nobody takes them out. At the mere sight of a nineteenth-century novel people say, 'Oh, but that's OLD!' and shy away immediately. Yet it is always fairly easy to SELL Dickens, just as it is always easy to sell Shakespeare. Dickens is one of those authors whom people are 'always meaning to' read, — George Orwell

Let us leave it to the reviewers to abuse such effusions of fancy at their leisure and over every new novel to talk in threadbare strains of the trash with which the press now groans. — Jane Austen

Anne could do no more; but her heart prophesied some mischance to damp the perfection of her felicity. — Jane Austen

Gentleman: An imaginary creature found in Jane Austen novels. — Natalya Vorobyova

Fpr ome aftermppm a week leading up to the formal, the entire senior school body would pile into our massive gymnasium and learn dances that we would NEVER DANCE AGAIN, except at our own children's formals, perhaps. Nevertheless, we threw ourselves into the task as if we were living in a Jane Austen novel and this was the only way we would ever fit into society. (from How to Be Happy: A Memoir of Love, Sex and Teenage Confusion) — David Burton