“The sole agents, indeed, in the action of her novels are individual human beings. And the comedy is the outcome of their making fools of themselves and of one another.” — 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
“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
“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
“A clever girl may pass through the phase of foolish miss on the way to sensible woman.” — Mary Lascelles Copy Share
“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
“Others beside Jane Austen have made their Eltons, though none quite so cooly as she.” — Mary Lascelles Copy Share
“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
“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
“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
“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
“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
“The sole agents, indeed, in the action of her novels are individual human beings. And the comedy is the outcome of their making fools… — Mary Lascelles Copy Share
“As for Elizabeth Bennet, our chief reason for accepting her point of view as a reflection of her author's is the impression that she… — Mary Lascelles Copy Share
