Northanger Abbey Quotes

“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, Northanger Abbey

“As for admiration, it was always very welcome when it came, but she did not depend on it.”
― Jane Austen

“What could she have done? She was a heroine, and with that came certain obligations.”
― Emily C.A. Snyder, Nachtstürm Castle: A Gothic Austen Novel

“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

“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, Nachtstürm Castle: A Gothic Austen Novel

“And are you prepared to encounter all the horrors that a building such as "what one reads about" may produce? Have you a stout heart? Nerves fit for sliding panels and tapestry?”
― Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey

“Another strike of lightening – now accompanied by the deep-bellied rumble, and the horse reared, incidentally setting Henry very picturesquely against the inconstant moon. Alas, Catherine was deeply engaged in her argument with Old Edric and this missed entirely the melodramatic display. But we may assume that, possessing so strong an imagination, Catherine had often pictured Henry thus...”
― Emily C.A. Snyder, Nachtstürm Castle: A Gothic Austen Novel

“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

“There was a great deal of good sense in all this; but there are some situations of human mind in which good sense has very little power; and Catherine's feelings contradicted almost every position her mother advanced.”
― Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey

“I have no notion of loving people by halves, it is not my nature.”
― 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, Nachtstürm Castle: A Gothic Austen Novel

“Good heaven! My dear Isabella, what do you mean? Can you -- can you really be in love with James?”
― Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey

“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, Northanger Abbey

“Pero es destino de toda heroína verse en ocasiones despreciada por el mundo, sufrir toda clase de difamaciones y calumnias y aun así conservar el corazón puro y limpio de toda culpa. La fortaleza que revela en esas circunstancias es justamente lo que la dignifica y ennoblece. En tan difíciles momentos, Catherine dió también prueba de su fortaleza de espíritu al no permitir que de sus labios surgiese la más leve queja.”
― Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey

“There is nothing people are so often deceived in, as the state of their own affections.”
― Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey

“The person, be it gentleman or lady , who has no pleasure in a reading a good novel , must be intolerably stupid”
― Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey

“The men think us incapable of real friendship, you know, and I am determined to show them the difference.”
― Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey

“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

“Miss Morland, no one can think more highly of the understanding of women than I do. In my opinion, nature has given them so much that they never find it necessary to use more than half.”
― Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey

“[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

“¡Cuán mortificadas se verían muchas damas si de repente se percataran de lo poco que supone la indumentaria femenina, por costosa que sea, para el corazón del varón [...] Todo lo que consigue la mujer al intentar lucir más elegante es satisfacer su propia vanidad, nunca aumentar la admiración de los hombres ni la buena disposición de otras mujeres.”
― Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey

“The abbey was vampire heaven.”
― Val McDermid, Northanger Abbey

“It was not four-and-twenty hours ago since they had met there to the same repast, but in circumstances how different! With what cheerful ease, what happy, though false security, had she then looked around her, enjoying every thing present, and fearing little in future, beyond Henry‘s going to Woodston for a day! Happy, happy breakfast! for Henry had been there, Henry had sat by her and helped her.”
― Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey

“[...] she knew not that a visitor had arrived within the last few minutes, till, on entering the room, the first object she beheld was a young man whom she had never seen before.”
― Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey

“Catherine was too wretched to be fearful. The journey in itself had no terrors for her; and she began it without either dreading its length or feeling its solitariness. Leaning back in one comer of the carriage, in a violent burst of tears, she was conveyed some miles beyond the walls of the abbey before she raised her head; and the highest point of ground within the park was almost closed from her view before she was capable of turning her eyes towards it. Unfortunately, the road she now travelled was the same which only ten days ago she had so happily passed along in going to and from Woodston; and, for fourteen miles, every bitter feeling was rendered more severe by the review of objects on which she had first looked under impressions so different. Every mile, as it brought her nearer Woodston, added to her sufferings, and when within the distance of five, she passed the turning which led to it, and thought of Henry, so near, yet so unconscious, her grief and agitation were excessive. The day which she had spent at that place had been one of the happiest of her life.”
― Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey

“I read it [history] a little as a duty, but it tells me nothing that does not either vex or weary me. The quarrels of popes and kings, with wars or pestilences, in every page; the men all so good for nothing, and hardly any women at all — it is very tiresome (...).”
― Jane Austen

“Catherine... enjoyed her usual happiness with Henry Tilney, listening with sparkling eyes to everything he said; and, in finding him irresistible, becoming so herself.”
― Jane Austen