Jane Quotes - page 7
Charlotte Brontë, with all her splendid gift for prose, stumbled and fell with that clumsy weapon in her hands. George Eliot committed atrocities with it that beggar description. Jane Austen looked at it and laughed at it and devised a perfectly natural, shapely sentence proper for her own use and never departed from it. Thus, with less genius for writing than Charlotte Brontë, she got infinitely more said.
Jane Austen
Most works in realism tell a succession of such abject truths; they are deeply in earnest, every detail is true, and yet the whole finally tumbles to the ground - true but without significance. How did Jane Austen save her novels from that danger? They appear to be compact of abject truth. Their events are excruciatingly unimportant; and yet, with R. Crusoe, they will probably outlast all Fielding, Scott, George Elliot, Thackeray, and Dickens. The art is so consummate that the secret is hidden; peer at them as hard as one may; shake them; take them apart; one cannot see how it is done.
Jane Austen
When I was young, it was not thought proper for young ladies to study very conspicuously; and especially with pen in hand. Young ladies (at least in provincial towns) were expected to sit down in the parlour to sew,-during which reading aloud was permitted,-or to practice their music; but so as to be fit to receive callers, without any signs of blue‐stockingism which could be reported abroad. Jane Austen herself, the Queen of novelists, the immortal creator of Anne Elliott, Mr. Knightly, and a score or two more of unrivalled intimate friends of the whole public, was compelled by the feelings of her family to cover up her manuscripts with a large piece of muslin work, kept on the table for the purpose, whenever any genteel people came in. So it was with other young ladies, for some time after Jane Austen was in her grave; and thus my first studies in philosophy were carried on with great care and reserve.
Jane Austen
Which brings us again, after this long way about, to Jane Austen and her novels, and that troublesome question about them. She was great and they were beautiful, because she and they were honest, and dealt with nature nearly a hundred years ago as realism deals with it to-day. Realism is nothing more and nothing less than the truthful treatment of material, and Jane Austen was the first and the last of the English novelists to treat material with entire truthfulness. Because she did this, she remains the most artistic of the English novelists, and alone worthy to be matched with the great Scandinavian and Slavic and Latin artists.
Jane Austen
Why do the characters in Jane Austen give us a slightly new pleasure each time they come in, as opposed to the merely repetitive pleasure that is caused by a character in Dickens? Why do they combine so well in a conversation, and draw one another out, without seeming to do so, and never perform? The answer to this question can be put in several ways; that, unlike Dickens, she was a real artist, that she never stooped to caricature, etc. But the best reply is that her characters, though smaller than his, are more highly organized. They function all round, and even if her plot made greater demands on them than it does, they would still be adequate.
Jane Austen
Jane Austen was born before those bonds which (we are told) protected women from truth, were burst by the Brontës or elaborately untied by George Eliot. Yet the fact remains that Jane Austen knew more about men than either of them. Jane Austen may have been protected from truth: but it was precious little of truth that was protected from her.
Jane Austen
Jane Whitney: GG Allin brags he's about to become the leader, the messiah for America's youth. He already claims to have a million followers. Where ever he goes he plays to sell out crowds and this is what they see: concerts filled with violence, bloodshed and sexual assault. GG Allin wants to lead America's young people in a bloody revolution to take over the country and he says nothing can be done to stop him.
GG Allin
It's not a fantasy performance, Jane. Come on. Everything I do is real. It comes out of my head. I live this life every day. When I'm onstage it's my therapy. It's not a performance. It's a ritual. And the ultimate performance would be when I've reached my peak and I'm not there yet so don't you all clap when I say this I'll commit suicide and I'll take your kids with me.
GG Allin
And Kathleen Willey also spoke about Linda Tripp, a Clinton-basher who seems to be at every ugly turn in this controversy. Tripp was outside the Oval Office when Willey emerged from her encounter with the President. Just how is it that Linda Tripp is so often conveniently involved in the President's troubles? For some clues let's bring in The New Yorker's Jane Mayer, who has profiled the controversial Miss Tripp in this week's issue. You write that co-workers often viewed her as an inveterate busybody. Has she always been a snoop and a gossip with a particular interest in other people's romantic lives?
Bryant Gumbel
In 1973, the United States Supreme Court handed down Roe v. Wade. In the sweep of a pen, the Supreme Court promised all American women that there would never again be another Jane Roe, beginning distant courts for the basic human right to decide for herself whether to terminate a pernancy. Never again, the Court promised, may the State presume to intrude on a decision so intimate and significant that it may well determine the remainder of a young woman's life.
Gloria Allred
I don't want to be a big shot. From head to toes, Roberto Clemente is good as Richard Nixon. I believe that. And I think that every man should believe that about himself. I am not dumb. I went to school. I made grades. But when I came here, I couldn't speak English. All I could say was, 'Me, Roberto Clemente.' Some of them laugh and say it sounded like, 'Me Tarzan, you Jane.
Roberto Clemente
