Pre 20th Century Quotes

“What beautiful hyacinths! I have just learnt to love a hyacinth. -- Catherine Morland”
― Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey

“Thus the ideal marriage at the end of a Jane Austen novel is not simply a conventional happy ending . . . It offers itself as an emblem of the ideal union of property and propriety -- a model to be emulated, a paradigm for a more general combination of the two on which the future of her society depends.”
― Tony Tanner, Jane Austen

“Jane Austen's profound concern with good manners was thus not simply a reflection of a cloistered gentility: it was a form of politics -- an involvement with a widespread attempt to save the nation by correcting, monitoring, and elevating its morals.”
― Tony Tanner, Jane Austen