Quotessence
Home / Quotes / Quote by Jane Austen

Quote by Jane Austen

“The promised notification was hanging over her head. The postman's knock within the neighbourhood was beginning to bring its daily terrors -and if reading could banish the idea for even half an hour, it was something gained.”

Quote by Jane Austen

Book:Mansfield Park
Create image

Work

Mansfield Park

Mansfield Park is a novel by Jane Austen, published in 1814. The story revolves around the protagonist Fanny Price and her experiences within the wealthy and complex Bertram family. Set in the early 19th century, the novel explores themes of social status, moral integrity, and the limitations placed on women during that time. Austen's wit and keen observation of human nature are evident throughout the narrative. more

Author

Jane Austen
Jane Austen

Jane Austen, born on December 16, 1775, and died on July 18, 1817, was a renowned English novelist of the 19th century. Known for her exquisite psychological portrayals and satirical humor, Austen's works mainly revolve around rural life in England, depicting the customs and interpersonal relationships of the time. Her representative works include 'Pride and Prejudice' and 'Sense and Sensibility'. more

You May Also Like

“After that they browsed for a minute or two in a semi-detached fashion. Nick found a set of Trollope which had a relatively modest and approachable look among the rest, and took down The Way We Live Now, with an armorial bookplate, the pages uncut. “What have you found there?” said Lord Kessler, in a genially possessive tone. “Ah, you’re a Trollope man, are you?” “I’m not sure I am, really,” said Nick. “I always think he wrote too fast. What was it Henry James said, about Trollope and his ‘great heavy shovelfuls of testimony to constituted English matters’?” Lord Kessler paid a moment’s wry respect to this bit of showing off, but said, “Oh, Trollope’s good. He’s very good on money.” “Oh…yes…” said Nick, feeling doubly disqualified by his complete ignorance of money and by the aesthetic prejudice which had stopped him from ever reading Trollope. “To be honest, there’s a lot of him I haven’t yet read.” “No, this one is pretty good,” Nick said, gazing at the spine with an air of judicious concession. Sometimes his memory of books he pretended to have read became almost as vivid as that of books he had read and half forgotten, by some fertile process of auto-suggestion. He pressed the volume back into place and closed the gilded cage.”

ReadingTrollope
Book:The Line of Beauty
Create image

“If you crave for Knowledge, the banquet of Knowledge grows and groans on the board until the finer appetite sickens. If, still putting all your trust in Knowledge, you try to dodge the difficulty by specialising, you produce a brain bulging out inordinately on one side, on the other cut flat down and mostly paralytic at that: and in short so long as I hold that the Creator has an idea of a man, so long shall I be sure that no uneven specialist realises it. The real tragedy of the Library at Alexandria was not that the incendiaries burned immensely, but that they had neither the leisure nor the taste to discriminate.... but we may agree that, in reading, it is not quantity so much that tells, as quality and thoroughness of digestion.”

ThinkingReadingSpecialistGeneralist
Author:Sir Arthur Quiller Couch
Create image

“THE VOICE YOU HEAR WHEN YOU READ SILENTLY is not silent, it is a speaking- out-loud voice in your head; it is *spoken*, a voice is *saying* it as you read. It's the writer's words, of course, in a literary sense his or her "voice" but the sound of that voice is the sound of *your* voice. Not the sound your friends know or the sound of a tape played back but your voice caught in the dark cathedral of your skull, your voice heard by an internal ear informed by internal abstracts and what you know by feeling, having felt. It is your voice saying, for example, the word "barn" that the writer wrote but the "barn" you say is a barn you know or knew. The voice in your head, speaking as you read, never says anything neutrally- some people hated the barn they knew, some people love the barn they know so you hear the word loaded and a sensory constellation is lit: horse-gnawed stalls, hayloft, black heat tape wrapping a water pipe, a slippery spilled *chirr* of oats from a split sack, the bony, filthy haunches of cows... And "barn" is only a noun- no verb or subject has entered into the sentence yet! The voice you hear when you read to yourself is the clearest voice: you speak it speaking to you. ~~-Thomas Lux”

Reading
Author:Thomas Lux
Create image

“And it is no true wisdom that you offer your disciples, but only its semblance, for by telling them of many things without teaching them anything, you will make them seem to know much, while for the most part they will know nothing. And as men filled not with wisdom but with the conceit of wisdom, they will be a burden to their fellow-men.”

ReadingConceitReadersConceit Of WisdomDangers Of ReadingSemblance Of Wisdom
Book:A History of Reading
Create image