Category Archives: Patience

May 12, 2008 · 1:25 pm

Emma’s reading lists

I love this little bit:

“Emma has been meaning to read more ever since she was twelve years old. I have seen a great many lists of her drawing up at various times of books that she meant to read regularly through-and very good lists they were-very well chosen and very neatly arranged-sometimes alphabetically and sometimes by some other rule. The list she drew up when only fourteen-I remember thinking it did her judgement so much credit that I preserved it some time; and I dare say she may have made out a very good list now. But I have done with expecting any course of steady reading from Emma. She will never submit to anything requiring industry and patience and a subjection of the fancy to the understanding.”

Mr. Knightley discussing Emma’s faults with Mrs. Weston, who will not admit them
Emma, volume 1, chapter 5

I think I have made various reading lists of my own over the years…

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Filed under Education, Emma, Emma Woodhouse, Miss Taylor - Mrs. Weston, Mr. Knightley, Patience, Reading

June 5, 2007 · 4:03 pm

Moralists and preachers


I’m on a Persuasion kick just now. So here’s another quote — and another picture of Lyme, this one of the Cobb.

“When the evening was over, Anne could not but be amused at the idea of her coming to Lyme to preach patience and resignation to a young man whom she had never seen before; nor could she help fearing, on more serious reflexion, that, like many other great moralists and preachers, she had been eloquent on a point in which her own conduct would ill bear examination.”

Persuasion, volume 1, chapter 11

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Filed under Anne Elliot, Capt. Benwick, Hypocrisy, Patience, Persuasion