“I suspect that Jane Austen's practice of denying herself the aid of figurative language which, as much as any of her other habits of expression, repelled Charlotte Brontë, and has alienated other readers, conscious with a dissatisfaction with her style… — Mary Lascelles Copy Share Image
“A story conducted by the time of a clock and calendars alone would be a story not of human beings but of mechanical toys.” — Mary Lascelles Copy Share Image
“Charlotte Palmer is no sillier than Harriet Smith; and yet, how intolerable we should find it to see and hear as much of Charlotte… — Mary Lascelles Copy Share Image
“In Jane Austen it was the critical faculty that would not be quieted; and that faculty in her, played on men and women.” — Mary Lascelles Copy Share Image
“A clever girl may pass through the phase of foolish miss on the way to sensible woman.” — Mary Lascelles Copy Share Image
“When many story-tellers occupy themselves with a social world which offers no great variety of lively action, their stories will probably resemble one another… — Mary Lascelles Copy Share Image
“Others beside Jane Austen have made their Eltons, though none quite so cooly as she.” — Mary Lascelles Copy Share Image
“Jane Austen's narrative style seems to me to show (especially in the later novels) a curiously chameleon-like faculty; it varies in colour as the… — Mary Lascelles Copy Share Image
“Sympathy compounded of liking and compassion in varying proportions evidently seemed to Jane Austen the most natural inventive to imaginative interest in a character.” — Mary Lascelles Copy Share Image
“I suspect that Jane Austen's practice of denying herself the aid of figurative language which, as much as any of her other habits of… — Mary Lascelles Copy Share Image
“The artist (I suppose) usually pays for the privilege by some sort of partial insomnia, by the possession of one faculty that will not… — Mary Lascelles Copy Share Image
“Mannerism, especially when it takes the form of recurrent word or phrase, is by no means easy to represent; there is but a hair's… — Mary Lascelles Copy Share Image
