Every young lady may feel for my heroine in this critical moment, for every young lady has at some time or other known the same agitation.
Jane AustenNot very good, I am afraid. But now really, do not you think Udolpho the nicest book in the world?" "The nicestโby which I suppose you mean the neatest. That must depend upon the binding.
Jane AustenIt is indolence... Indolence and love of ease; a want of all laudable ambition, of taste for good company, or of inclination to take the trouble of being agreeable, which make men clergymen. A clergyman has nothing to do but be slovenly and selfish; read the newspaper, watch the weather, and quarrel with his wife. His curate does all the work and the business of his own life is to dine.
Jane AustenBut Shakespeare one gets acquainted with without knowing how. It is a part of an Englishman's constitution. His thoughts and beauties are so spread abroad that one touches them everywhere; one is intimate with him by instinct. No man of any brain can open at a good part of one of his plays without falling into the flow of his meaning immediately.
Jane Austen