Sense and Sensibility

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Macmillan Company, 1913 - Domestic fiction - 347 pages
 

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Page 11 - That young lady had a talent for describing the involvements and feelings and characters of ordinary life, which is to me the most wonderful I ever met with. The Big Bow-wow strain I can do myself like any now going ; but the exquisite touch, which renders ordinary commonplace things and characters interesting, from the truth of the description and the sentiment, is denied to me.
Page 89 - I like a fine prospect, but not on picturesque principles. I do not like crooked, twisted, blasted trees. I admire them much more if they are tall, straight and flourishing. I do not like ruined, tattered cottages. I am not fond of nettles, or thistles, or heath blossoms. I have more pleasure in a snug farmhouse than a watch-tower, and a troop of tidy, happy villagers please me better than the finest banditti in the world.
Page 200 - Mrs. Ferrars was a little, thin woman, upright, even to formality, in her figure, and serious, even to sourness, in her aspect. Her complexion was sallow ; and her features small, without beauty, and naturally without expression ; but a lucky contraction of the .brow had rescued her countenance from the disgrace of insipidity, by giving it the strong characters of pride and ill-nature. She was not a woman of many words ; for, unlike people in general, she proportioned them to the number of her ideas...
Page 322 - Marianne Dashwood was born to an extraordinary fate. She was born to discover the falsehood of her own opinions, and to counteract, by her conduct, her most favourite maxims. She was born to overcome an affection formed so late in life as at seventeen, and with no sentiment superior to strong esteem and lively friendship, voluntarily to give her hand to another!
Page 101 - Elinor was not inclined, after a little observation, to give him credit for being so genuinely and unaffectedly illnatured or ill-bred as he wished to appear. His temper might perhaps be a little soured by finding, like many others of his sex, that through some unaccountable bias in favour of beauty, he was the husband of a very silly woman; but she knew that this kind of blunder was too common for any sensible man to be lastingly hurt by it.
Page 11 - But, amidst the infinite variety of lighter literature with which he beguiled his leisure, Pride and Prejudice, and the five sister novels, remained without a rival in his affections. He never for a moment wavered in his allegiance to Miss Austen. In 1858 he notes in his journal: ' If I could get materials, I really would write a short life of that wonderful woman, and raise a little money to put up a monument to her in Winchester Cathedral.
Page 31 - Marianne, as she wandered alone before the house, on the last evening of their being there, " when shall I cease to regret you, when learn to feel a home elsewhere ? Oh, happy house, could you know what I suffer in now viewing you from this spot, from whence, perhaps, I may view you no more ! And you, ye well-known trees — but you will continue the same ! No leaf will decay because we are removed, nor any branch become motionless although we can observe you no longer ! No ; you will continue the...
Page 11 - On the whole, Miss Austin's works may safely be recommended, not only as among the most unexceptionable of their class, but as combining, in an eminent degree, instruction with amusement, though without the direct effort at the former, of which we have complained, as sometimes defeating its object. For those who cannot, or will not, learn anything from productions of this kind, she has provided entertainment which entitles her to thanks...
Page 89 - It is very true," said Marianne, " that admiration of landscape scenery is become a mere jargon. Everybody pretends to feel and tries to describe with the taste and elegance of him who first defined what picturesque beauty was. I detest jargon of every kind, and sometimes I have kept my feelings to myself, because I could find no language to describe them in but what was worn and hackneyed out of all sense and meaning.
Page 314 - ... they only wanted something to live upon. Edward had two thousand pounds, and Elinor one, which, with Delaford living, was all that they could call their own; for it was impossible that Mrs. Dashwood should advance anything, and they were neither of them quite enough in love to think that three hundred and fifty pounds a year would supply them with the comforts of life.

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