Michelle’s Reviews > A Jane Austen Education: How Six Novels Taught Me About Love, Friendship, and the Things That Really Matter > Status Update

- Pg 103 On novels, reading, and learning: "Learning to read, means learning to live. Keeping your eyes open when you're looking at a book is just a way of teaching yourself to keep them open all the time". - Pg 106 On learning to love. It doesn't just happen by itself. - "The mere habit of learning to love is the thing". - "I could keep learning to live new things my whole life". Northanger Abbey

- Pg 86 on the potential negative impact of books (media): "the extravagant stories of wicked noblemen and haunted castles that the two girls read together gave the heroine all the wrong ideas about the world". - Pg 98 "It is good to be in touch with your feelings, but it is even better if you also think about them". - feeling ashamed of a friend that is a bad influence, and feeling ashamed to have ever loved her.

- Pg 70 acknowledge your feelings, don't be controlled by them. - pg 72 on self-centeredness. "by testing her impulses against the claims of logic, the heroine of P&P learned the most important lesson of all. She learned that she is not the center of the universe".

Pg 67 - romanticism vs. reason. "Austen viewed romanticism with alarm precisely because of what it said about the proper relationship between feeling and reason." - Modern influence of Romanticism: gave rise to all of the great art of the last 2 centuries. Example of pop music. example of pop psychology "trust your feelings" and "if it feels good, do it".

* Pg 64 - "It takes courage, Austen was telling us, to admit your mistakes, and even more courage to remember them". "For Austen, maturation means refusing to forget".

"Growing Up" Chapter * Pg 51 - "for her [Austen] growing up has nothing to do with knowledge or skills, because it has everything to do with character and conduct". * Pg 52 - describes people in their 20s then and now as jaded, see all as boring and predictable. Swear will never marry.

In the chapter: "Everyday Matters"- pg 27: "She [Austen] understood that what fills our days should fill our hearts, and what fills our hearts should fill our novels." Pg 33: "Austen taught me a new kind of moral seriousness - taught me what moral seriousness really means. It means taking responsibility for the little world, not the big one. It means taking responsibility for yourself."