Jane Austen Quote of the Day

I have loved none but you

"Dare not say that man forgets sooner than woman, that his love has an earlier death.  I have loved none but you.  Unjust I may have been, weak and resentful I have been, but never inconstant.  You alone have brought me to Bath.  For you alone, I think and plan.  Have you not seen this? Can you fail to have understood my wishes?"

Captain Wentworth's letter to Anne, in the Musgrove's room at the White Hart in Bath
Persuasion, volume 2, chapter 11

Rupert Penry-Jones as Wentworth. Image via TVscoop.

You pierce my soul

I don't know how it is that we haven't featured Captain Wentworth's letter here yet.  <swoon...>  Happy Monday, dear readers!

"I can listen no longer in silence.  I must speak to you by such means as are within my reach.  You pierce my soul.  I am half agony, half hope.  Tell me not that I am too late, that such precious feelings are gone forever."

Captain Wentworth's letter to Anne, in the Musgrove's room at the White Hart in Bath
Persuasion, volume 2, chapter 11

Icon from Heather, from the first icon contest at Jane Austen Today.  Click here to vote in the current contest.  Voting ends Wednesday, but you can vote once a day until then.

Loving longest

A double-dose of quotes today.  First, Persuasion:

"All the privilege I claim for my own sex (it is not a very enviable one; you need not covet it), is that of loving longest, when existence or when hope is gone."

Anne to Captain Harville
Persuasion, volume 2, chapter 11

I've posted some thoughts on the movie over at Following Austen. I wanted to love it, but didn't. Would love to know what you thought.

Forced into prudence

"How eloquent could Anne Elliot have been! how eloquent, at least, were her wishes on the side of early warm attachment, and a cheerful confidence in futurity, against that over-anxious caution which seems to insult exertion and distrust Providence!  She had been forced into prudence in her youth; she learned romance as she grew older:  the natural sequel of an unnatural beginning."

Persuasion, chapter 4

Enjoy Persuasion this weekend, and let me know what you think of it!

Queen of pity parties

"Mary was happy no longer: she quarrelled with her own seat, was sure Louisa had got a much better somewhere, and nothing could prevent her from going to look for a better also. . . . Anne found a nice seat for her, on a dry sunny bank, under the hedgerow, in which she had no doubt of their still being, in some spot or other.  Mary sat down for a moment, but it would not do; she was sure Louisa had found a better somewhere else, and she would go on till she overtook her."

Persuasion, volume 1, chapter 10

I love Mary.  Nothing snaps me out of my own pity parties faster than thinking of her, and her "I'm sure Louisa has found a better," as Sophie Thompson says in her brilliant performance.

I realize now that I am not entirely sure what a hedgerow looks like, but here is a shot of one of the fields around Steventon, where Jane grew up.

I would rather be overturned by him

"If I loved a man as she loves the Admiral, I would always be with him, nothing should ever separate us, and I would rather be overturned by him, than driven safely by anybody else."

Louisa Musgrove on Admiral and Mrs. Croft
Persuasion, volume 1, chapter 10

Jennifer Higham as Louisa Musgrove and Rupert Penry-Jones as Captain Wentworth.

The Granny's Teeth steps on the Cobb at Lyme, from which Louisa later falls when trying to jump into Captain Wentworth's arms.

On being a late twenty-something

"It sometimes happens that a woman is handsomer at twenty-nine than she was ten years before; and, generally speaking, if there has been neither ill-health nor anxiety, it is a time of life at which scarcely any charm is lost."

in the description of Elizabeth Elliot
Persuasion, volume 1, chapter 1

Hear, hear!  (Or is that, here, here!  I never know...)  Of course, Marianne would disagree.

Julia Davis as Elizabeth Elliot; Sally Hawkins as Anne Elliot; and Amanda Hale as Mary Musgrove.. ©Nick Briggs/Clerkenwell Films for Masterpiece™

Complete Jane Austen

A lost man

"'Yes, here I am, Sophia, quite ready to make a foolish match. Anybody between fifteen and thirty may have me for asking.  A little beauty, and a few smiles, and a few compliments to the navy, and I am a lost man.'"

Captain Wentworth to his sister Mrs. Croft
Persuasion, volume 1, chapter 7

Glorying in the sea

"Anne and Henrietta, finding themselves the earliest of the party the next morning, agreed to stroll down to the sea before breakfast. They went to the sands, to watch the flowing of the tide, which a fine south-easterly breeze was bringing in with all the grandeur which so flat a shore admitted. They praised the morning; gloried in the sea; sympathized in the delight of the fresh-feeling breeze--and were silent;"

Persuasion, volume 1, chapter 12

Sent to me by reader friend Bonnie, who says "I love words and those always come back to me each summer when heading to the beach. Jane wrote those sentences almost like worship."

I agree.  I'm still in North Carolina recovering from all the activity of the holiday.  My favorite thing is my daily stroll on the beach, now with my lab Bess in tow, who rolls and runs and buries her little nose in the sand.

The last smiles of the year

Fall has always been my favorite season (although now -- and I have to laugh at myself -- spring and summer are competing for the title.  Winter occasionally as well, if it weren't for the horrible darkness).  I love that Anne loves fall as well.

"Her pleasure in the walk must arise from the exercise and the day, from the view of the last smiles of the year upon the tawny leaves and withered hedges, and from repeating to herself some few of the thousand poetical descriptions extant of autumn, that season of peculiar and inexhaustible influence on the mind of taste and tenderness, that season which has drawn from every poet, worthy of being read, some attempt at description, or some lines of feeing."

Anne, on walking with the whole group at Uppercross
Persuasion, volume 1, chapter 10

I'm out for a walk to view some of the last smiles of the year with my new girl Bess.