Northanger Abbey Quotes

What could she have done? She was a heroine, and with that came certain obligations. ~ Emily C.A. Snyder

Such a narrative as this demands some sort of physical consolation for its spiritual tribulation. Our heroine received it in one last cup of tea. The reader may be advised to do so likewise. ~ Emily C.A. Snyder

They danced again, and when the assembly closed, parted, on the lady's side at least, with a strong inclination for continuing the acquaintance. Whether she thought of him so much while she drank her warm wine and water and prepared herself for bed as to dream of him when there, cannot be ascertained; but I hope it was no more than in a light slumber, or a morning doze at most, for if it be true, as a celebrated writer has maintained, that no young lady can be justified in falling in love before the gentleman's love is declared, it must be very improper that a young lady should dream of a gentlemen before the gentleman is first known to have dreamed of her. ~ Jane Austen

It is possible to read too many novels. Henry Tileny, Northanger Abbey ~ Jane Austen

[On Jane Austen] She was fully possessed of the idealism which is a necessary ingredient of the great satirist. If she criticized the institutions of earth, it was because she had very definite ideas regarding the institutions of heaven. ~ Rebecca West

No man is offended by another man's admiration of the woman he loves; it is the woman only who can make it a torment. ~ Jane Austen

She went back to the kitchen, for the kitchen of the Hand of God was so large that Miss Joliffe and Anastasia used part of it for their sitting-room, took the pencil out of "Northanger Abbey," and tried to transport herself to Bath. Five minutes ago she had been in the Grand Pump Room herself, and knew exactly where Mrs Allen and Isabella Thorpe and Edward Morland were sitting; where Catherine was standing, and what John Thorpe was saying to her when Tilney walked up. But alas! Anastasia found no re-admission; the lights were put out, the Pump Room was in darkness. A sad change to have happened in five minutes; but no doubt the charmed circle had dispersed in a huff on finding that they no longer occupied the first place in Miss Anastasia Joliffe's interest. And, indeed, she missed them the less because she had discovered that she herself possessed a wonderful talent for romance, and had already begun the first chapter of a thrilling story. ~ John Meade Falkner

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

every one of the novels. To some the delightful freshness and humour of Northanger Abbey, its completeness, finish, and entrain, obscure the undoubted critical facts that its scale is small, and its scheme, after all, that of burlesque or parody, a kind in which the ~ Jane Austen

But neither could compare with the gargantuan natural edifice that was the mountain upon which Nachtstürm Castle rose. It was a mountain made of the darkness between two lightning bolts. It was made less of earth than Stygian frost. Whole towns fell away as they ascended, as though the ranks of black and frowning conifers waged war against the humans below. Even the path – rather narrow and rarely straight – seemed less made by centuries of pilgrim feet and more by the trace of some careless demon's claw.

It was, in fact, perfect. ~ Emily C.A. Snyder

Apart from such chaotic classics as these, my own taste in novel reading is one which I am prepared in a rather especial manner, not only to declare, but to defend. My taste is for the sensational novel, the detective story, the story about death, robbery and secret societies; a taste which I share in common with the bulk at least of the male population of this world. There was a time in my own melodramatic boyhood when I became quite fastidious in this respect. I would look at the first chapter of any new novel as a final test of its merits. If there was a murdered man under the sofa in the first chapter, I read the story. If there was no murdered man under the sofa in the first chapter, I dismissed the story as tea-table twaddle, which it often really was. But we all lose a little of that fine edge of austerity and idealism which sharpened our spiritual standard in our youth. I have come to compromise with the tea-table and to be less insistent about the sofa. As long as a corpse or two turns up in the second, the third, nay even the fourth or fifth chapter, I make allowance for human weakness, and I ask no more. But a novel without any death in it is still to me a novel without any life in it. I admit that the very best of the tea-table novels are great art - for instance, Emma or Northanger Abbey. Sheer elemental genius can make a work of art out of anything. Michelangelo might make a statue out of mud, and Jane Austen could make a novel out of tea - that much more contem ~ G.K. Chesterton

Friendship is certainly the finest balm for the pangs of disappointed love. ~ Jane Austen

People that marry can never part, but must go and keep house together. People that dance only stand opposite each other in a long room for half an hour. ~ Jane Austen

It's your fault because you got me into Morag Fraser. I'd never even heard of the Hebridean Harpies series till you dragged me along to her event. And now I am totally hooked. I was reading Vampires on Vatersay till one in the morning. I just had to finish it. And then I started Banshees of Berneray at breakfast and I could hardly drag myself away from it to come and meet you. ~ Val McDermid

There has never been a day in my life when I was not in love. ~ Edward Abbey

The desert wears ... a veil of mystery. Motionless and silent it evokes in us an elusive hint of something unknown, unknowable, about to be revealed. Since the desert does not act it seems to be waiting
but waiting for what? ~ Edward Abbey

Little boys love machines; girls adore horses; grown-up men and women like to walk. ~ Edward Abbey

Wherever two human beings are alive, together, and happy, there is the center of the world. ~ Edward Abbey

To aid and abet in the destruction of a single species or in the extermination of a single tribe is to commit a crime against God, a mortal sin against Mother Nature. Better by far to sacrifice in some degree the interests of mechanical civilization, curtail our gluttonous appetite for things, ever more things, learn to moderate our needs, and most important, and not difficult, learn to control, limit and gradually reduce our human numbers. We humans swarm over the planet like a plague of locusts, multiplying and devouring. There is no justice, sense or decency in this mindless global breeding spree, this obscene anthropoid fecundity, this industrialized mass production of babies and bodies, ever more bodies and babies. The man-centered view of the world in anti-Christian, anti-Buddhist, antinature, antilife, and
antihuman. ~ Edward Abbey

The shock of the real. ~ Edward Abbey

Reincarnation? There is such a thing. What could be more Mozartian than the Nutcracker Suite? ~ Edward Abbey

There are only two living American authors fully deserving of the Nobel Prize. One is Lewis Mumford. The other is Wallace Stegner, whose novels and essays provide us a comprehensive portrait of industrial society in all its glittering corruption and radiant evil. ~ Edward Abbey

When in doubt about drinking from an unknown spring look for life. If the water is scummed with algae, crawling with worms, grubs, larvae, spiders and liver flukes, be reassured, drink hearty, you'll get nothing worse than dysentery. But if it appears innocent and pure, beware. ~ Edward Abbey

The cactus of the high desert is a small grubby, obscure and humble vegetable associated with cattle dung and overgrazing, interesting only when you tangle with it the wrong way. Yet from this nest of thorns, this snare of hooks and fiery spines, is born once each year a splendid flower. It is unpluckable and except to an insect almost unapproachable, yet soft, lovely, sweet, desirable, exemplifying better than the rose among thorns the unity of opposites ~ Edward Abbey

I'd never realized, never dreamt, that a relationship without something as simple as a touch could be so hard - Abbey ~ Jessica Verday

Neophyte writers tend to believe that there is something magical about ideas and that if they can just get a hold of a good one, then their futures are ensured. ~ Lynn Abbey

We are preoccupied with time. If we could learn to love space as deeply as we are now obsessed with time, we might discover a new meaning in the phrase 'to live like men. ~ Edward Abbey

Paradise for a happy man lies in his own good nature. ~ Edward Abbey

Cold morning on Aztec Peak Fire Lookout. First, build fire in old stove. Second, start coffee. Then, heat up last night's pork chops and spinach for breakfast. Why not? And why the hell not? ~ Edward Abbey

That which today calls itself science gives us more and more information, and indigestible glut of information, and less and less understanding. ~ Edward Abbey

Life is the wave's deep whisper on the shore Of a great sea beyond. ~ Henry Abbey

I have written much about many good places. But the best places of all, I have never mentioned. ~ Edward Abbey

The year is 1327. Franciscans in a wealthy Italian abbey are suspected of heresy, and Brother William of Baskerville arrives to investigate. When his delicate mission is suddenly overshadowed by seven bizarre deaths, Brother William turns detective. He collects evidence, deciphers secret symbols and coded manuscripts, and digs into the eerie labyrinth of the abbey, where extraordinary things are happening under the cover of night. A spectacular popular and critical success The Name of the Rose is not only a narrative of a murder investigation but an astonishing chronicle of the Middle Ages. ~ Umberto Eco

The vending machine lacked the willpower of the Western elevator, and it dutifully spat out several chocolate bars and a packet of salt and vinegar chips. I gave you more money than that, thought William, and the vending machine gave him some more. ~ Kit Abbey

On a very gloomy dismal day, just such a one as it ought to be, I went to see Westminster Abbey. ~ Karl Philipp Moritz

I'd learned so much from traveling to familiar places that I figured I'd learn twice as much by going to a place I knew nothing about. ~ Gerry Abbey

By the time we made "Abbey Road", John and I were openly critical of each other's music, and I felt John wasn't much interested in performing anything he hadn't written himself. ~ Paul McCartney

Life is hard? True - but let's love it anyhow, though it breaks every bone in our bodies. ~ Edward Abbey

In all of nature, there is no sound more pleasing than that of a hungry animal at its feed. Unless you are the food. ~ Edward Abbey

Dr. Sarvis with his bald mottled dome and savage visage, grim and noble as Sibelius, was out night-riding on a routine neighborhood beautification project, burning billboards along the highway - U.S. 66, ~ Edward Abbey

War? The one war I'd be happy to join is the war against officers. ~ Edward Abbey

Nobody seems more obsessed by diet than our antimaterialist, otherworldly, New Age, spiritual types. But if the material world is merely illusion, an honest guru should as content with Budweiser and bratwurst as with raw carrot juice, tofu, and seaweed slime. ~ Edward Abbey

The basic science is not physics or mathematics but biology
the study of life. We must learn to think both logically and bio-logically. ~ Edward Abbey

Three figures crossed the Abbey gardens as the moon broke from behind a drifting cloudbank. The nearby pond was bathed in a silver sheen, parts of the sandstone wall reflecting back a wavery bluish light. ~ Brian Jacques

Music clouds the intellect but clarifies the heart. ~ Edward Abbey

I am a huge 'Downton Abbey' fan - huge! ~ Joan Rivers

So I write mainly for the fun of it, the hell of it, the duty of it. I enjoy writing and will probly be a scribbler on my dying day, sprawled on some stony trail halfway between two dry waterholes. ~ Edward Abbey

In a nation of sheep, one brave man forms a majority. ~ Edward Abbey

Scientific method: There's a madness in the method. ~ Edward Abbey

He looked up. "Is it time already?" She nodded.

He rose and waited as she gathered her things. The dog followed them out the door, but then he bounded down the stairs to the drive. The animal sniffed intently at something on the ground and then rolled, happily rubbing his head and neck in whatever it was.

Lord Swartingham sighed. "I'll have one of the stable boys wash him before he enters the Abbey again."

"Mmm," Anna murmured thoughtfully. "What do you think of 'Adonis'?"

He gave her a look so full of incredulous horror that she was hard-pressed not to laugh. "No, I suppose not," she murmured. ~ Elizabeth Hoyt

Whatever we cannot understand easily we call God; this saves wear and tear on the brain tissues. ~ Edward Abbey

I think it's important to keep your own identity when you've got a baby. ~ Abbey Clancy

As war and government prove, insanity is the most contagious of diseases. ~ Edward Abbey

Phoenix, Arizona: an oasis of ugliness in the midst of a beautiful wasteland. ~ Edward Abbey

Perfectly, perfectly right, my dearest Harriet; you are doing just what you ought. While you were at all in suspense I kept my feelings to myself, but now that you are so completely decided I have no hesitation in approving. Dear Harriet, I give myself joy of this. It would have grieved me to lose your acquaintance, which must have been the consequence of your marrying Mr. Martin. While you were in the smallest degree wavering, I said nothing about it, because I would not influence; but it would have been the loss of a friend to me. I could not have visited Mrs. Robert Martin, of Abbey-Mill Farm. Now I am secure of you for ever. Harriet ~ Jane Austen

I have been a lucky man. But someone has to be. ~ Edward Abbey

I would not sacrifice a single living mesquite tree for any book ever written. One square mile of living desert is worth a hundred 'great books' - and one brave deed is worth a thousand. ~ Edward Abbey

When the biggest, richest, glassiest buildings in town are the banks, you know that town's in trouble. ~ Edward Abbey

I must be the only person in 'Strictly' history who's actually put on weight during rehearsals. ~ Abbey Clancy

Wilderness. The word itself is music. ~ Edward Abbey

Old foot trails may be neglected, back-country ranger stations left unmanned, and interpretive and protective services inadequately staffed, but the administrators know from long experience that millions for asphalt can always be found; Congress is always willing to appropriate money for more and bigger paved roads, anywhere - particularly if they form loops. Loop drives are extremely popular with the petroleum industry - they bring the motorist right back to the same gas station from which he started. ~ Edward Abbey

Obviously, I play a villain in 'Downton Abbey'. As an actor, you want to get a variety of roles, so to be offered the part of Joe, it was perfect. ~ Rob James-Collier