raffaela > Recent Status Updates

"A good man must feel, how wretched, and how unpardonable, how hopeless and how wicked it was, to marry without affection."

How on earth is everything going to come together in thirty pages??

CALLED IT

(Not that it wasn't completely obvious, but hey, I'll take what I can get).

I start reading this and the weather turns really foggy 😂

I forgot how obnoxious the Thorpes are in this one. There's always at least one or two characters per Austen novel that you want to slap with their own book

Jane really went off on people who think they're too good for novels huh

Finished Part I: New England

Yes I'm on an Austen kick, what of it

Literally nothing has happened in this book yet but I don't even care because the writing is so good

I hate Mrs Norris so much

Listening to this on audio and trying not to laugh out loud at work

"Believe me, sister, of all the men alive
I never yet beheld that special face
Which I could fancy more than any other."

This is kind of disappointing so far. I don't really love, or love to hate, any of the characters and the setting is just depressing. Does this get any better?

I think I've figured out who the Scarlet Pimpernel is 🤔

"If I am to discuss what is wrong, one of the first things that are wrong is this: the deep and silent modern assumption that past things have become impossible. There is one metaphor of which the moderns are very fond; they are always saying, "You can't put the clock back." The simple and obvious answer is "You can."

"The most important man on earth is the perfect man who is not there."

"This story shall the good man teach his son,
And Crispin Crispian shall ne'er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remembered --
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers."

"Anne could believe that a more equal match might have greatly improved him; and that a woman of real understanding might have given more consequence to his character, and more usefulness, rationality, and elegance to his habits and pursuits."

"How eloquent could Anne Elliot have been - how eloquent, at least, were her wishes on the side of early warm attachment, and a cheerful confidence in futurity, against that over-anxious caution which seems to insult exertion and distrust Providence! She had been forced into prudence in her youth, she learned romance as she grew older - the natural sequel of an unnatural beginning."

"Anne, with an elegance of mind and sweetness of character, which must have placed her high with any people of real understanding, was nobody with either father or sister: her word had no weight; her convenience was always to give way;-- she was only Anne."

Off to a bit of a rough start with Holland's understanding of the OT and Paul, yikes

Why is everyone in this book so slow to put two and two together, it's maddening

"If anyone does deny these basic facts [such as the existence of the self or the reality of the material world] we call him insane - or a philosopher."

😂

"I don't want a chicken in every pot, but rather a feast of fat things on the mountain of the Lord, a feast of wine on the lees, and of fat things full of marrow (Isaiah 25:6)."

JP reminds me of Chesterton's man who discovered England

"A nameless flayed martyr under Diocletian could not have anticipated Charlemagne - but was responsible for him nonetheless."

Whenever Emma or Mr Knightley describe their ideal man or woman (respectively) they just end up describing each other... We love to see it

Mrs Elton is so annoying and the audiobook is making it worse ugh

"Assuredly, the attributes [of God] which it is most necessary for us to know are these three: Loving-kindness, on which alone our entire safety depends: Judgement, which is daily exercised on the wicked, and awaits them in a severer form, even for eternal destruction: Righteousness, by which the faithful are preserved, and most benignly cherished."

"Since the perfection of blessedness consists in the knowledge of God, He has been pleased, in order that none might be excluded from means of obtaining felicity... to manifest his perfections in the whole structure of the universe, and daily place Himself in our view, that we cannot open our eyes without being compelled to behold Him."